Evelyn H. Daniel, Lokman I. Meho, and Barbara B. Moran 9 ...lmeho/daniel-meho-moran.pdf · 2009). The most famous of these academies was the Beit al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) which

Evelyn H. Daniel, Lokman I. Meho, and Barbara B. Moran1

9 Education for Library and InformationScience in the Arab States

Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction to library and information science (LIS)education in the 22 countries that comprise the League of Arab States.2 Thesecountries have a total population of 393.5 million people (World Bank, 2016).The population of the member countries varies tremendously; from Egypt withalmost 90 million people to Bahrain with less than a million inhabitants (UNDevelopment Program, 2014). Although on the whole these countries share acommon language, religion, and cultural history, they vary greatly in otherfactors such as political structure and socioeconomic conditions. Their grossdomestic product per capita ranges from $1,361 in the Comoros to $101,057 inthe United Arab Emirates (UN Development Program, 2014). Because of spaceconstraints, this chapter provides only a brief overview of the rich and complexstate of LIS education in the region, focusing on programs that offer or haveoffered at least a bachelor’s degree in the field.

Information about LIS education in the Arab world is fragmented and some-time contradictory; there is no one single source that provides even the namesof all the existing programs in the region. The latest (2007) IFLA World Guide toLibrary, Archive and Information Science Education compilation of LIS programsis out of date and has very incomplete and inconsistent information about theprograms in the Arab countries. This source lists only 16 programs in thesecountries (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions,2007). In 2012, Aufi and Lor identified 36 LIS academic departments in theregion (Aufi & Lor, 2012). In an attempt to compile a more comprehensive listfor this chapter, the authors first searched the LIS literature in English, Arabicand French, and identified a number of programs. The preliminary list was

1 The three authors contributed equally to this work. Moran is the corresponding author.2 The current members of the League are Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq,Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The overview will also include Syriawhich is currently suspended as a member of the League of Arab States. In this paper the terms“Arab states” and “Arab world”will be used synonymously.

Library and Information Science in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Amanda B. Click, et al., Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aub-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4595479.Created from aub-ebooks on 2018-04-14 01:30:59.

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circulated to individuals and to listservs, and more programs were discovered.All of the available websites from the programs were searched to gather addi-tional information. The resulting list of the LIS programs in the Arab world ispresented in this chapter (Tab. 9.1). Seventy-one current programs of LIS educa-tion were identified plus an additional six programs that have ceased to exist.Unfortunately the list contains only the most basic facts about each programbecause there is no central source of more comprehensive information. Unlikethe Association for Library and Information Science/American Library Associa-tion (ALISE/ALA) statistics which provide easily comparable and comprehen-sive data about all the accredited LIS programs in North America (Library andinformation science education statistical report 1983–), a similar source of infor-mation about factors such as budgets, number of students, number of facultyor length and types of curricula in the LIS programs in the Arab states is notavailable, and perhaps will not be until some form of regional or internationalaccreditation makes it a requirement.

The chapter begins with a brief look at the history and development of edu-cation for librarians and information specialists in the Arab states. Then LIS edu-cation in different parts of the Arab world is examined separately because of thevariation of LIS programs across the region. The chapter closes with a discussionof current trends and some of the challenges that LIS education in the regionfaces in strengthening the preparation of future information workers.

History of LIS Education in the Arab World

Higher learning is deeply rooted in the history and societies of the Arab MiddleEast (Herrera, 2004). After the spread of Islam in the 7th century, religiousschools known as madrasas were established and became the main institutionsof higher learning in the Middle East (Makdisi, 1981). Examples of these institu-tions include the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez (859) and al-Azhar in Cairo(970) – both considered among the oldest universities in the world. During thesame period, other institutions of the Arab world such as hospitals, libraries,observatories, and private homes known as “academies” undertook the develop-ment of the non-religious sciences, inspired by the ancient Greeks (Romani,2009). The most famous of these academies was the Beit al-Hikma (House ofWisdom) which was founded in the early 9th century in Baghdad and by themiddle of the century had become an unrivaled center for the study of huma-nities and science in addition to being one of the largest repositories of books inthe world. Under the Ayyubids and Mamluks, many madrasas and other infor-mation centers were founded, playing a fundamental role in the relatively high

174 Evelyn H. Daniel, Lokman I. Meho, and Barbara B. Moran


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literacy rates of the medieval Islamic world. As the balance of power and intel-lectual vitality shifted away from the Middle East to Europe after the sixteenthcentury, the place of the Arab Middle East in the academic world underwenta dramatic reversal. The Middle East became an importer of knowledge fromEurope.3

From the mid-19th century on, a variety of foreign schools and colleges wereestablished in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, many of which still exist today. Theseschools were established by religious missions, foreign governments, local com-munities, and private associations from France, Great Britain, Austria, Greece,Germany, the United States, and Italy (Herrera, 2004). The missionary schools,supported by French Catholic and later British, German, and American religiousdenominations provided a European and American type of education. Examplesare the Syrian Protestant College which was founded in 1866 and renamed in 1920to American University of Beirut and Saint Joseph University [Université Saint-Joseph] which was founded in Beirut in 1875 by the Jesuits (Donohue, 2004).Foreign colonial powers also established research centers that included some ofthe region’s best libraries and library collections, for example, the French Institutefor Arab Studies in Damascus (Institut français d’études Arabes de Damas) whichwas established in 1922.

Institutions of higher education continued to grow during the first half ofthe 20th century. By 1950, there were 12 universities in the Arab world. Despitethe existence of several modern universities, research centers, and privateschools in the region since the 19th century, the earliest calls for establishing anLIS program in the Arab world to support such institutions were made only inthe mid-1940s. Yusuf As’ad Daghir, then Director of the Lebanese NationalLibrary, was among the first to make such calls. He advocated that the Arab gov-ernments work together for the establishment of an LIS institute that would helpin the advancement of the region and help bridge the gap between the Arabcountries and the West. (Daghir, 1947, pp. 164–174) This early vision was ful-filled in 1951 with the establishment of the LIS department at Fouad I University(currently Cairo University). However, it was not until the mid-1970s that LISeducation became widely available in the Arab world.

In 1963, in an article in an issue of Library Trends devoted to internationallibrary education, Nasser Sharify reported that in the Middle East “professionaltraining of librarians is still in its infancy” (Sharify, 1963, p. 227). He describes

3 For historical background and further details on the history of education in the Middle East,see Makdisi, 1981. For a brief summary of the history of higher education in the Middle East tocurrent times, see Herrera (2004); al-Rashdan (2009) and Romani (2009).

9 Education for Library and Information Science in the Arab States 175


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various UNESCO efforts and the efforts of local library associations to providetraining for librarians but at the time this article was written the library programat the University of Cairo was still the only one in the region. Sharify differedfrom Daghir in that he did not advocate a pan-Arab approach to LIS educationbut recommended that each individual country examine the question of theestablishment of a library school and consider carefully the factors about thelevel of program, the availability of faculty, teaching facilities, and librarylaboratories. He states that ideally a graduate school would be the solution, buttaking into consideration the existing university patterns of the regional univer-sities, an undergraduate program might be more feasible at the present. Sharifycloses by stating, “Not only is library education a matter of national concern foreach country, but in the last analysis, nationals must accept responsibility fordevelopment of libraries and library service” (Sharify, 1963, p. 255).

From the mid-1940s until the mid-1970s, Arab countries relied heavily ontraining, courses and workshops provided by local library associations, minis-tries of culture and education, national and academic libraries, UNESCO andother regional and international organizations (Bouazza & Nimer, 1986; Itayem& al-Akhras, 1984; Sharify, 1963). They also relied on sending their citizens over-seas to pursue degrees in the field, especially to Egypt, France, the UnitedKingdom, and the United States. One of the barriers that impeded the develop-ment of LIS was that the profession of librarianship was neither recognized norunderstood in the region. The concept that librarians needed academic trainingto be effective in their work was an alien idea to all but a few specialists whohad received professional library training abroad (Sharif, 1981). Another majorimpediment was the lack of indigenous faculty to provide a sufficient number offull time instructors to teach in library education programs. In addition, therewas also a lack of professional literature including teaching material in Arabic(Bouazza & Nimer, 1986, p. 12).

During the 1950s and 1960s, UNESCO, in particular, played a significant rolein the growth of interest in education for librarians not just in the Arab statesbut throughout the developing world. Between 1966 and 1972, UNESCO spon-sored thirteen regional meetings and seminars across the world, which werevery significant in developing LIS programs internationally. Hundreds of keylibrarians from all continents joined in a “collective search for ways and meansto promote library education” (Keresztesi, 1982, p. 374). In 1959, UNESCO spon-sored a Regional Seminar focused on the development of libraries in the Arabworld which identified the “lack of adequate library training facilities as thelargest single factor retarding library development in the area” (Sharif, 1981).A UNESCO Expert Meeting on the National Planning of Documentation andLibrary Services in the Arab Countries, held in Cairo in February 1974, once



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again highlighted the importance of indigenous professional education forlibrarians. The delegates recommended “that national institutions and programsof professional education be established, developed and maintained as the prin-cipal means of supplying adequate numbers of professional staff for documenta-tion and library services as an integral part of the national educational structureat universities or other institutions of higher education, and that they be pro-vided with ready access to appropriate library and information resources” (Kent,1967 quoted in Sharif, 1981). In addition to these conferences, UNESCO also fos-tered national initiatives through its willingness to provide significant financialresources and to deploy field representatives to provide the most up-to date pro-fessional expertise available.

LIS education in the Arab world finally came to fruition with the foundingof a number of new programs in the 1970s. Among the first were two programslocated in Iraq. In 1970 al-Mustansiriyah University established a Department ofLibrary Science within the University Libraries. This program initially offered adiploma but added a bachelor’s degree in 1974. In 1972 with the help of UNESCO,a one year postgraduate library science program was started at the University ofBaghdad (Itayem & al-Akhras, 1984). In the same year, the program at OmdurmanIslamic University in the Sudan was reactivated (it was deactivated three yearsafter it was originally founded in 1966). Then the action shifted to Saudi Arabiawhere in 1973 an LIS program was begun at King Abdulaziz University and in 1974at Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (Sharif, 1981). In the mid-1970s,a number of programs in Northern Africa and the Levant were established. Thefirst school in French speaking North Africa, the School of Information Sciences[L’École des sciences de l’information], opened in 1974 in Rabat, Morocco. Onceagain UNESCO under the United Nations Development Program provided aid andcontributed $1,445,750 over a five year period from 1975–1980 (Sharif, 1981, p. 93).Over the next five years, three library programs were founded in the region,including the programs at the University of Algiers (Algeria) in 1975, the Universityof Tripoli (Libya) in 1976, and the Institute of Press and Information Sciences[Institut de presse et des sciences de l’information] in Tunisia in 1979. The firstlibrary program in the Levant was founded in Lebanon in 1975 at the LebaneseUniversity and afterwards one was started in 1977 at the University of Jordan.

During the 1980s, the momentum to institute LIS programs continued. Ascan be seen in Fig. 9.1, 17 programs in the region were opened in that decadeincluding programs in countries where none existed before (i.e., Kuwait, Oman,Qatar and Syria). New programs were added in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya,Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Tunisia (see Tab. 9.1 for more specific information).This growth accelerated during the 1990s with the establishment of 26 additionalprograms. There were 18 new programs established in the first decade of the



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21st century and four more have opened since 2010. At present, the only Arabstates without LIS programs are Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, and Somalia.

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Number of LIS Programs Founded per Decade:1950-Present

1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

Fig. 9.1: Number of LIS programs founded per decade, 1950–present.

The increase in LIS programs in the Arab world in the past 20 or so years is notsurprising given that modern universities were relatively recent arrivals in theregion. As mentioned earlier, there were only 12 universities in the 22 Arabnations in 1950. That number has ballooned in the past few decades; in 2010there were approximately 400 universities in these countries not including over1,000 other institutions of tertiary education such as community colleges andteacher training institutions. The number of students enrolled in higher educa-tion in the region rose from 2.967 million in 1998–1999 to 7.607 in the 2007–2008academic year, a jump of 256% (UNESCO, 2010). The growth in the number of LISprograms reflects not only growth of higher education, but also the increase in thenumber of libraries and information centers that needed to be staffed by trainedLIS graduates. It is also interesting to note that two of the programs that haveopened in the past 10 years were founded in private institutions located on cam-puses of US or British universities that offer a westernized form of LIS education:the Graduate Program in Library and Information Science in the College of Com-puter Information Technology at the American University in the Emirates and theLibrary and Information Studies MA program at the University College LondonQatar (UCL-Q).

At the present time there are 71 LIS programs in the Arab region that provideat least a bachelor’s degree, and there has been a move in the past few years to



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upgrade many of these programs to the master’s and doctoral degree levels. In2016, more than half of these programs offered a master’s or postgraduate degree(usually in addition to the bachelor’s) and 31% offered a doctoral degree. Howeveras Aufi and Lor point out, while most LIS programs in the US and England offergraduate level programs only, there has only been one LIS school in the Arabworld that has discontinued its bachelor’s program (Aufi & Lor, 2012, p. 481).

We began our research thinking we would find uniformity in LIS educationacross the countries in the Arab world, but soon discovered there were moredifferences among the programs than similarities. The impact of factors suchas political structures, socioeconomic conditions, and continuing conditionsof civil unrest, terrorism and war had resulted in vast differences in the wayprograms in the region had developed. For instance, the disparity betweenthe programs in the Gulf area and those in Iraq were huge. So, rather than dealwith each country individually, we decided to follow a regional approach toexplore the variations in LIS education across the Arab world and thus orga-nized the chapter to focus upon the LIS programs using the following geographi-cal divisions: Egypt (a single country grouping listed first because the first LISschool in the Arab world opened here), the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania,Morocco, Tunisia), Gulf States and Yemen (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, SaudiArabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen), Iraq (a single country grouping becauseof recent conflicts), the Levant (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria), and North-east Africa and the Comoros (Comoros, Dijbouti, Somalia, Sudan). The develop-ment of LIS education in countries within each group are discussed in the nextsection.

Egypt

Egypt was not only the site of the first LIS program in an Arab state, but cur-rently is also the country with the most programs. Nearly a third of all of LISprograms in the region are located in Egypt. The program at University of Cairowas the first LIS program in the region. It started as a four-year evening programleading to the bachelor’s degree. It became a department in the College of Artsin 1954. The master’s and PhD programs began in 1956, and the postgraduate in1969 (Itayem & al-Akhras, 1984). Because LIS education developed earlier inEgypt than anywhere else in the region, the school at Cairo University played animportant role in the spread of LIS education across the area. Halwagy, writing in1992, claimed:



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“One can hardly find a single department of library science in the Arabworld established without one or more of the staff members who graduatedfrom Cairo University. Moreover, most, if not all, similar departments in otherArab countries have followed the example of the Egyptian department in regula-tions and curricula” (Halwagy, 1992, p. 259). The Supreme Council for EgyptianUniversities and Institutions has the responsibility for setting standards for LISeducation, in addition to endorsing fields of specialization, approving highereducation plans and priorities and accrediting fields of study (Mikhail, 2010).It is likely the presence of this central coordinating organization that has ledto the homogeneity in programs and curricula reported by Aufi and Lor inthe Egyptian universities (Aufi & Lor, 2012, p. 479). For example, all the state-funded Egyptian programs except for the one at al-Azhar are located in the sameuniversity administrative unit: the College of Arts.

LIS programs in Egypt have proliferated over the past two decades. In 1992,Halwagy reported there were five LIS programs in Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria,Beni-Suef, Tanta and Menoufia (p. 256). Thirteen more programs opened beforethe decade closed, and another four have opened since 2000. Except for theprogram at October 6 University, all of the LIS programs in Egypt are in publiclysupported institutions. There was an attempt about 15 years ago to open a LISschool in the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina; this school was expected to havea western style curriculum with an integration of technology throughout theprogram (Aman, 1999). However, despite the fact that UNESCO approved theproposal and funding for the school, the first director of the Bibliotheca Alexan-drina decided not to include the school as part of the new library (Aman, 2014).

To enrol in an undergraduate Egyptian LIS program a student must havea secondary school certificate. The undergraduate program takes four years tocomplete; students who successfully complete the program are awarded the BA(Abdel-Hady & Shaker, 2006). There has been a rapid rise in the enrolment inall levels of LIS programs over the past decade. In 1992–1993, there were 900students in the undergraduate LIS program at Cairo and a total of 750 under-graduates in all the other programs (Abdel-Hadi & Bouazza, 1994). Mikhailreported a vastly expanded undergraduate population in 2010. The largestprogram was at Tanta University with 1,781 undergraduate LIS students in2009–2010: at that same time the program at Alexandria reported 1,562 under-graduates, and the one at Cairo 1,278 (Mikhail, 2010). The number of postgradu-ate students is also soaring. By 2010 the number of LIS dissertations reached1,264 with 854 (68%) for the master’s degree and 410 (32%) for the PhD degree.However, part of this enrolment surge is likely a result of the fact that in Egypt,as in some other parts of the Arab world, admission to LIS programs is easierthan admission to more prestigious academic programs such as medicine or



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engineering, and some students enrol in LIS programs as a way of earning a uni-versity degree. LIS does not seem to be a first choice for many students. Accord-ing to Mikhail, those who get a degree usually prefer to get a job abroad ratherthan stay in Egypt (Mikhail, 2010).

The enrolment figures alone would indicate a thriving LIS education sectorin Egypt. However, as in many other parts of the world, the Egyptian LIS pro-grams face problems. Some of the major historical problems and challengesinclude (1) inclusion of archival studies and records management with LISstudies; (2) the founding of several new LIS departments in regional universitiesin the 1980s and 1990s without good planning and preparation and without con-sideration of the specific needs of the LIS programs; (3) the presence of LIS pro-grams in Colleges of Arts, Education, and Humanities which impose on studentscoursework that has little or nothing to do with LIS; and (4) academic restric-tions that impede improving and updating curricula and programs, thus, prohi-biting programs from staying current with developments in the field and stayingon par with international and even with other Arab LIS programs (Mahmud,2014). Mahmud states that these challenges continue to exist even today andnothing seems to be planned to deal with them.

Isma’il (2013) surveyed a sample of 635 (or 56% of all) undergraduate LISstudents at Alexandria University, and found that more than two-thirds of thestudents never heard of or knew anything about LIS before enrolling in theprogram. The five most important reasons for enrolling in an LIS program were:belief in LIS degree providing many job opportunities after graduation in andoutside the country and in both the public and private sectors; ease of study;coursework requires less effort in comparison to other fields; and parents’recommendation. Similarly, Mikkawi (2011) reported on a survey of a sample of335 freshman and senior students at three LIS programs in Egypt (Cairo, Tanta,and Assiut). He found that nearly one-third of the students had not wished toenroll in an LIS program, and half of the students had neither heard of nor knewanything about LIS before enrolling in their programs.

In terms of current problems facing the LIS sector in Egypt, one of the mostcommonly voiced complaints is that the curricula of the programs have not keptpace with the changing needs of the modern library. LIS programs in Egyptoften did not provide students with hands on training or courses in digitization,online information services, and electronic documents and their management(Amin, 2009). As a result, the graduates often find they cannot cope with thejob demands of the modern library (Magdy, 2011). According to ‘Abd al-Rahim(2014), only 40% of the LIS programs in the country have their own labs (e.g.,computer labs and/or bibliographic labs). The others rely on central labs of thecolleges of arts. Mahmud (2014) reports the following additional problems:



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(1) mismatch between skills gained in the program and job market needs; (2) lackof jobs or job opportunities; (3) poor personal, professional, and research skillsof the graduates; (4) lack of accreditation standards; (5) lack of diversity in curri-cula among the programs – nearly all LIS programs in the country follow thesame curriculum; and (6) lack of enough faculty members. The recent politicalturmoil in Egypt has only led to less funding for LIS programs resulting in over-crowded classrooms, poorly paid faculty, and outdated equipment.

However, this lack of funding is not confined to LIS education. In Egypt, stu-dents pay no tuition fees to attend the public universities. While there is strongsupport to continue to keep tertiary education free, institutions of higher educa-tion are not being funded sufficiently to be able to keep current with those inthe rest of the world, especially in the rapidly changing fields of science andtechnology. At present, there is a move to establish more private institutions tooffer an alternative to the poorly performing state funded system. Private educa-tion, which often features western style curricula, is costly and out of the reachof most students. Despite the call for systematic reform of the educational system,the present economic and political insecurity make it difficult for changes to beenacted (El-Awady, 2013).

The Maghreb

The Maghreb is the traditional name given to the area of North Africa west ofEgypt encompassing the nations of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco andTunisia. There are currently 12 LIS programs in the region: five in Algeria, fourin Libya and one each in Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The need for LISeducation in this region became evident after the countries gained their nationalindependence in the 1950s and 1960s. Before the creation of formal LIS pro-grams, instruction in library science in the Maghreb was provided by institutionssuch as the Bibliothèque Nationale in Algeria and the Institute Ali Bach Hambain Tunisia (Semra, 1994).

Except for Libya, all the countries in this region are former French colonies,and LIS education in the Maghreb reflects the influence of that colonial history.All of the nations in the Maghreb had civilizations based on the printed text, andthus their library traditions are older than those in many other countries in theArab world. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia each has a national library inheritedfrom their French colonial past. For example, legislation enacted in 1926 underthe French Protectorate created the Moroccan National Library (Lajeunesse &Sène, 2004).



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The first LIS program in the Maghreb was the School of Information Sciences(L’École des Sciences de l’Information or ESI) established with the help ofUNESCO in Rabat, Morocco in 1974. In 1975 the Institute of Librarianship andDocumentation (Institute de Bibliothéconomie et Documentation) in Algiers wasfounded, followed by the establishment of a program at al-Fateh University (cur-rently University of Tripoli) in Libya in 1976 (Gdoura, 2008). LIS education beganin Tunisia in 1979 at the Institute of Press and Information Sciences. The firstLIS program in Mauritania was not established until 2008. A brief overviewof LIS education in each of the countries of the Maghreb follows.

Algeria

In the Maghreb, Algeria is the country with the largest number of LIS programs.Libraries existed in Algeria before the French colonized the country, but therewas no LIS education until 1975, – over a decade after the country won its inde-pendence from France. However, prior to the establishment of formal LIS educa-tion in Algeria, the Bibliothèque Nationale and afterwards the Ministry of Infor-mation and Culture provided training for librarians on a regular basis starting in1964 (Dyab, 2002). The first program, the Institute of Librarianship [L’Institut debibliothéconomie] was established at the University of Algiers in 1975, andstarted with 13 students; the programs at the University of Constantine and theUniversity of Oran were opened in the early 1980s. Two new programs wereopened in 2009: one at Université de Tébessa and the other at Université BadjiMokhtar – Annaba. There are also five universities that have LIS sections thataltogether employ 22 faculty members and enrol or provide training to thou-sands of students, but they are not considered here because the highest LISdegree they offer is a two-year post-high school diploma rather than a bachelordegree (Sidhum, 2014). The programs in Algeria are offered in both Arabic andFrench (Bin al-Tayib, 2013).

The LIS programs like the rest of the Algerian system of higher educationare in the midst of a major change in structure as they transition from theirprevious degree structure to a new degree structure, the three-stage “licence,master’s, and doctorate (LMD)” system, based on the French model of highereducation. The LMD model is one accepted by the Bologna Process, the Eur-opean Union (EU) initiative designed to create a system of comparable andunderstandable degrees throughout the EU. The Bologna Process is intended toserve as a mechanism to permit students to transfer credit and establish degreeequivalency between one university or national higher education system andanother (Johnson, 2013). As is discussed later, not only Algeria but also Morocco



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and Tunisia have looked to the Bologna Process as a means of reforming theirsystems of higher education. (Croché & Charlier, 2012) Under the LMD model,the requirements for each degree level are as follows:– licence or bachelor’s degree: three years or six semesters of study;– master degree: two years or four semesters after the bachelor; and– doctorate degree: at least three years or six semesters of studies, fieldwork

and/or research after the master. it is the highest degree in the LMD system.

The LIS programs in Algeria began the process of implementing the LMD systemin 2004 (Zahra, 2013). The five programs in Algeria currently employ 151 facultymembers (70 females and 81 males; 40 with doctoral degrees, 30 who are doc-toral students or ABDs, and 81 who hold master’s degrees). The program at theUniversity of Algeria has the largest number of faculty members at 71 (or 47%of the total in the country), followed by the program at the University of Con-stantine with 27 faculty. The program at the University of Constantine currentlyenrols over 700 undergraduate students, 150 master’s students, 30 doctoralstudents in the new system, and another 80 in the old system (Bin al-Tayib,2013). The program at Université de Tébessa has the smallest group of faculty at14 (Sidhum, 2014). According to Sidhum, who surveyed 79% of all 151 facultymembers in the five LIS programs, 40% of the faculty members’ time is spent onresearch and attending conferences, 33% on thesis and dissertation advising,13% on teaching, and 5% on curriculum development. The 120 faculty memberswho were included in the analysis indicated that LIS is becoming more popularin the country, especially after the introduction of the LMD system that guaran-tees equivalency with degrees offered in most European countries. Some of theserious problems that LIS faculty members encounter in Algeria are lack of col-laboration and low scholarly productivity. (Sidhum, 2014)

Libya

Libya, the most easterly of the countries in the Maghreb, gained its indepen-dence from Italy in 1951. Before formal LIS education was established in Libya,education and training for librarians was offered from the late 1960s until theestablishment of LIS programs by the Institute of Public Administration and byuniversity libraries in Tripoli and Benghazi. Participants received a certificate ofattendance at the conclusion of the programs, which usually lasted from one tothree months. Those who attended the programs were predominantly peoplealready working in school and/or public libraries or cultural centers (Dyab,2002). Professional librarians in Libya then held degrees from other countries



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including Egypt, the United States and England. In 1976 undergraduate LISstudy was begun at the University of El-Fateh (now the University of Tripoli)to meet an increasing need for professional staff for the growing number oflibraries in the country (Dyab, 1997). Students from several Arab and Africancountries enrolled in the program, which was regularly revised to keep abreastwith the new advances and trends in LIS studies. In 1995, the Department starteda master’s degree program.

In 1985, a second LIS program was opened at the University of Garyounis(currently the University of Benghazi) and in 1993 a third program was openedat al-Jabal al Gharbi University. The latter program depends heavily on staffmembers from the University of Tripoli and the curriculum is almost the same.Arabic is the language of instruction in all of these programs (Dyab, 2002).In 2001, the Libyan Academy for Graduate Studies founded the Departmentof Information in the School of Humanities which included a PhD program inInformation and a master’s program in information which was composed oftwo divisions: Information Systems and Information Technology. In 2007, theDepartment was renamed to Information Studies and replaced the two master’sdivisions with one in Information Management and another in Archives Man-agement, offering PhD degree in Information Studies and master’s and post-graduate diploma degrees in Information Technology, Library and InformationScience, and Archives and Documentation each focusing on five or more of thefollowing areas: basics of information science, information and communicationtechnologies, information management, information and material processing,research methods, information storage and retrieval, information use and users,and knowledge management (Bezan, 2014). In 2014, more than 30 students wereadmitted to these programs.

Mauritania

The newest LIS program in the Maghreb is found in Mauritania. This largelydesert country forms a bridge between the Arab Maghreb and western sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, Mauritania is among the poorest countries in theworld, but as one of Africa’s newest oil producers, Mauritania hopes for amore prosperous future as its offshore reserves of oil and natural gas are devel-oped. It was not until 1962 that a national library system was established, andthe national library opened in 1965 (Diouwara, 1993). LIS education in Maurita-nia began in 2008 when a bilingual (Arabic/French) undergraduate program– Librarianship, Archives, and Documentation [Bibliothèques, archives et docu-mentation] – was created at Nouakchott University.



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Morocco

The sole provider of LIS education in Morocco is the École des Sciences del’Information (ESI). After the establishment of the National Center for Docu-mentation in 1968, it became clear that Morocco was suffering from a severeshortage of trained information workers. In 1974, ESI was founded with the aidof UNESCO and UNDP; and a group of promising Moroccan students were sentabroad to earn PhDs to provide an initial faculty for the new institution. ESI isanother of the programs of LIS education in the Maghreb that is not located in auniversity. Instead it is a free-standing institute of higher learning operatedunder the auspices of the Ministry of Planning (Dyab, 2002). In Morocco, as insome other francophone countries, a distinction is made between librarians anddocumentalists, but in Morocco the education for both takes place at ESI in aprogram designed for “informatistes,” a term that is unique to francophone LIS(Moulaison, 2008). The education system at ESI has been modeled on LIS educa-tion in France, and until recently, when some courses have begun to be taughtin English, all instruction at ESI has been in French.

ESI is noted for the strength of its faculty, its building and its equipment(Dyab, 2002). Students are admitted to all the programs at ESI on the basis of acompetitive exam. The number of students admitted is limited, and entry to theprogram is competitive because graduates are almost assured of finding workafter the completion of their degrees. Since 2011, as a result of the Reform Act ofHigher Education in Morocco, ESI has restructured its programs. Like other pro-grams in the region, ESI has adopted the French style LMD (licence, master’s,and doctorate) degree structure. According to its website, ESI is making thesecurricular changes to “meet the needs of the current job market and majorchanges affecting the field of content management, information and knowl-edge” (École des Sciences de l’Information, 2014). When the reform is complete,ESI will offer the following undergraduate and graduate degrees:– specialized informatiste or “licence” (3 years)– master in information science (4 semesters)– specialized Master’s degrees (4 semesters)– PhD (3 years)

As part of the reform, the teaching and research at ESI will be concentratedin four areas: 1) Library and Documentation; 2) Archival and Records Manage-ment; 3) Management and Management of Information Systems; and 4) BusinessIntelligence and Competitive Intelligence (École des Sciences de l’Information,2014).



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ESI is at present one of the strongest LIS programs in the Arab world, and ithas the potential to become even stronger as it attempts to expand its interna-tional perspective. ESI explicitly states that it has designed its new program tomeet the requirement of the Bologna Process (École des Sciences de l’Informa-tion, 2014) in order to facilitate student mobility and degree equivalency for itsgraduates. In addition, ESI is exploring the possibility of becoming a member ofthe iSchool organization and already lists itself as an “i-School” on its website.ESI appears to have ambitions to be a player in the global LIS world.

Tunisia

LIS education in Tunisia began in the 1960s (1964–1971) at the Institut Ali BachHamba. In 1979, the Institute of Press and Information Sciences [l’Institut depresse et des sciences de l’information or IPSI] was founded and provided thefirst LIS program in the country. From 1979 to 1992, IPSI offered a program inlibrarianship, documentation and archives, at first only at an undergraduatelevel, but beginning in 1988 a master’s [maîtrise] program was also offered. In1981 a second program of LIS education was begun at the Higher Institution ofDocumentation [l’Institut supérieur de documentation de Tunis or ISD] and forabout a decade Tunisia had two LIS programs. However in 1992, IPSI discontin-ued its LIS program and subsequently all LIS education in Tunisia has beencentralized at ISD (Habchi, 2014).

Although it is located on the campus of the University of Manouba, ISDis a public institution with legal and financial autonomy (Decree no. 81–63 of11 July 1981) operated under the Ministry of Higher Education and ScientificResearch (L’Institut Supérieur de Documentation de Tunis, 2014). In 2008, ISDlike the programs in Algeria and Morocco adopted the “licence, master’s, anddoctorate (LMD)” degree sequence and began offering a professional master’sdegree in Library Science and Documentation. Since inaugurating the LMD degreesequence, ISD has begun to offer several new master’s degrees and is workingtowards the establishment of a doctoral degree program in 2015 (Habchi, 2014).The LIS programs at ISD are offered in French and Arabic. Admission to thelicence program is based on the results of a national competition run by the Minis-try of Higher Education and Scientific Research (L’Institut Supérieur de Documen-tation de Tunis, 2014). ISD is modernizing its courses and bringing its degrees intoline with those established by the Bologna Process.



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Gulf States and Yemen

The Member States of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) comprise Bahrain,Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Weinclude Yemen in this group to encompass the entire Arabian Peninsula. Likethe Maghreb region, LIS education is flourishing in the Gulf region where manygovernments appear to have an understanding of the important role informationplays in the economy and in knowledge management (Rehman, 2009). Thisunderstanding has meant new national educational policies and calls for curri-cula reform, new goals for education and a shift in emphasis of the LIS degree.The Gulf States have invested their not inconsiderable resources into manynew experimental forms of higher education, although the growth in new formsof educational institutions is not without its critics because the innovationscome from outside and may have been imported without sufficient thoughtfor cultural fit (Donn & Manthri, 2010).

The rapid growth of extra-governmental investment in higher educationis demonstrated through private and non-government institutions, foreign uni-versities with local campuses, virtual universities and partnerships betweenlocal and foreign universities (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer, 2011). These often coexistsomewhat uncomfortably with the more traditional government sponsored edu-cation programs. A key difference between them is that government sponsoredprograms are usually free or have very low fees attached.4 In addition, the extra-governmental programs are typically expensive; and non-government institu-tions are subject to fewer regulations.

The driving force for change in higher education for the Gulf States is theeconomy and the issue of human workforce deployment, which has changed sub-stantially in the last decade. Before the oil boom, the indigenous population heldall manner of jobs in the economy. After it, they did not. Government jobs sup-ported by oil revenues demanded skills not available in the indigenous popula-tion. After decades of population growth, a surplus of indigenous job seekers hasbeen created. Prospects for the future suggest even higher unemployment untilnew employment opportunities are generated (Capelli, 2005). The Gulf has beenseen as a region where everyone who wants to, can find work,5 but this is nolonger the case. Oil revenues comprise a declining share of the economy.

4 Some programs offered outside of regular hours are offered on a fee basis to pay faculty forafter-hours teaching.5 A recent Economist article (April 19, 2014, p. 54) reports that the migrant population in the GulfStates makes up 44% of the population compared to 15% for North America and 12% for Europe.



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In all six Arab Gulf countries, but especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,dependence on foreign workers has increased. Eighty percent of the Kuwaitiwork force is expatriate, as is 53% of that of Saudi Arabia (International Mone-tary Fund, 2008). Donn and Al Manthri (2010) assert that discussions of educa-tion policy are dominated by a belief that the sole role of higher education is tosupport the labor market. All six Gulf countries have a youthful population sothat the issue of employment has become intricately interwoven with education.The World Economic Forum says that it is not just a question of creating newjobs but also a question of shifting jobs away from expatriate workers andtowards natives (World Economic Forum, 2003). In most Arab Gulf countries, asis true of the Arab world generally, the state is the largest single employer pro-viding around 40% of the jobs for the workforce. Nationals, after receiving a freeeducation, expect guaranteed public employment at any level and professionthey desire. Some employment procedures and practices to assist the speed atwhich nationals move into employment currently occupied by migrant workersinclude quotas, market-oriented inducements to employers, restructuring andredefining jobs (so that there are not “foreigner’s jobs” or “dirty jobs”), liberali-zation of the telecommunications market, privatization of state-owned assets(public transport, power generation) and opening up local markets to interna-tional trade (Zakharia, 2005). With the prospective of ever-higher unemploy-ment, education and training have become central to successful economic diver-sification, which has implications for LIS education.

We identified 14 LIS programs in this region, two of which began in the1970s, six in the 1980s although one has closed, two in the 1990s and four in thenew century for a total of 13 current programs. Nine of these 13 programs existin government-sponsored universities within arts, humanities or social sciencesfaculties or colleges; three have institutional homes representing some of thenewer university arrangements; and one is a program mainly for school andpublic librarianship in the Kuwaiti Public Authority for Applied Education andTraining. The language of instruction for the older schools is Arabic or a combi-nation of Arabic and English (Jabiri, 2009). An issue in this respect is the contin-ued lack of current LIS literature in Arabic (Alqudsi-Ghabra & al-Ansari, 1998).Six of the programs offer only a bachelor’s degree; three schools offer only amaster’s. Oman’s program offers both a bachelor’s and master’s, as does one ofthe programs in Saudi Arabia. Two schools offer the full suite of degrees: bache-lor’s, master’s, and PhD – both of these are in Saudi Arabia and are housed inComputer and Information Science faculties.

“LIS education is most influenced by the faculty members who run theseacademic departments,” said the authors in a study of the bio-bibliographicprofiles of six library schools in the region (Ansari, Rehman & Yusuf, 2000).



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They examined the resumes of 49 of 65 faculty members and found that mostreceived doctorates from Western countries during the 1980s and 1990s and thatthe majority of them had considerable professional and managerial experience.The faculty offered instruction in traditional areas of library operations andservice but had weak research and publication records and few engaged in con-tinuing education activities or were active in national or regional professionalforums (Ansari, Rehman & Yusuf, 2000).

Rehman, al-Ansari and others have been active in a series of subsequentstudies of member LIS schools in the GCC Member States. A 2001 study of fiveprograms in three countries reports that a four-year undergraduate degree, pat-terned on the credit hour-based semester system is the entry for professionalpractice (Rehman, al-Ansari & Yousef, 2002a). In an earlier work Rehman notedthat the Gulf countries started four-year bachelor programs during the 70smodeled on the American and British models and on Egypt, added master’s pro-grams in the 80s and one started offering a Ph.D. degree replicating the Egyptiantradition (Rehman, 2000). On the basis of his research, he claimed that employ-ers and managers were “conscious of the inadequacies of their bachelor degreeprograms” and sent large numbers of students to the U.S. and U.K. for master’sand doctoral studies (p. 148). His book proposes an updated competency-basedcurriculum (Rehman, 2000).

A 2002 study by Rehman and colleagues presents the results of a survey of144 academics and professional leaders from North America, Southeast Asia,and the Arabian Gulf on what these competencies should be, and found that thecurriculum should include: knowledge of information theory, information useand users, the social context of information, information needs, ethics, informa-tion resources development concepts and process, information organization andprocessing, information searching and retrieval, access services, automationand networking, web design and searching, research capabilities, planning andevaluation, human resource skills, and communication (Rehman, al-Ansari &Yousef, 2002b). In comparing responses from the three regions, surprisingly fewsignificant differences were found. For example, national information policywas perceived to be highly important by participants of the Southeast Asianregion, moderately important for those of the Arabian Gulf and less by NorthAmerican participants (p. 210). A very high degree of importance for conserva-tion and preservation was reported by the Southeast Asian group and signifi-cantly less by the other two (p. 211). Library automation, by contrast, was per-ceived as very important by the North American and Southeast Asian participantsand less so by the Arabian Gulf group (p. 212). Participants from the Arabian Gulfplaced competencies relating to the Internet and the virtual library at the highestlevel (p. 213).



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The need to conduct systematic reviews of significant aspects of the perfor-mance of LIS programs is important. Rehman investigated the evaluation strate-gies of nine of the Gulf programs (Rehman, 2008a). The schools were doingevaluation through self-study or external reviewer and all agreed that an accred-itation system independent of higher education authorities should be in placealthough there was little agreement as to who the accrediting body should be.The most popular candidate was SLA/Arabian Gulf Chapter, perhaps based onthe Association’s active role in the region. Seven programs favored certificationand two proposed the Ministry of Education as an accrediting agent. A morerecent study by Rehman examined in greater detail the practicalities of develop-ing a proposal for accrediting LIS programs in the region (Rehman, 2012). Herules out SLA’s Arabian Gulf Chapter because SLA headquarters does not dealwith the evaluation of academic programs. He also rules out the Ministries ofEducation because of their bureaucratic structure, which he considers inconsis-tent with academic practices; and national accrediting bodies like the AmericanLibrary Association (ALA), which he believes will not accredit programs in othercountries. As a result he suggests working through the GCC Universities Forumperhaps with the assistance of IFLA’s Education and Training Section. He statesthat Kuwait and Umm al-Qura (Saudi Arabia) Universities initiated a symposiumon LIS education in 2006, a useful way to create wider awareness of the issue.Rehman concludes: “It is significant to note that all the nine schools favored theestablishment of an accreditation system” (p. 71).

A recent analysis of trends in LIS departments in Gulf universities points toa shift in affiliation from arts and humanities to science and technology collegesin order to attract students with high GPAs who prefer to enroll in science andtechnology and medical fields (‘Udah & Ma’tuq, 2011). With the exception ofYemen, the Gulf States stand out in the Arab world for their attention to, andinvestment in, higher education with interesting programs and advances in LIS.Each country is considered individually below.

Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island that is connected to the mainland bythe King Fahd Causeway to Saudi Arabia. It was a British Protectorate untilbecoming an independent state in 1971, and was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is one of four Arab countries that did not have and still does not havean LIS program. Training of librarians, however, was provided in the mid-1970sby the British Council, and afterwards by several government and academicagencies (e.g., Inservice Training Center, the Ministry of Education, and the



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Department of Education at the University of Bahrain), especially for peopleinterested in school and public librarianship. For people interested in academicand special librarianship, the country relies on foreigners or sends its studentsand staff to other countries for LIS education, especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia,the United Kingdom, and the United States (Alian, 1994).

Kuwait

The State of Kuwait was also a British Protectorate. It became an independentstate in 1961, and since 1963 has been a constitutional monarchy. Early librarytraining was offered in 1968 by the Bureau of Staff in coordination with the Min-istry of Education and in 1971–73 by Kuwait University (Randi, 2013). There arecurrently two degree programs. One was founded in 1977 at the Public Authorityfor Applied Education and Training as a diploma program and updated to abachelor’s degree program in 1986, focusing on school and public librarianship.The program was revised in 1998–1999 to include other types of librarianship.Today, it has 20 faculty members and four lecturers (Randi, 2013). The otherprogram is in Kuwait University and, although initiated in 1977 as a diplomaprogram, added a bachelor’s degree in 1987 and, representative of the newthrust in higher education in the Gulf States, started a master’s in LIS in 1996after a long history of attempts to establish a program in different colleges anddepartments (Alqudsi-Ghabra & al-Ansari, 1998). It began in the College of Grad-uate Studies and later transferred to the College of Social Sciences as a scienceprogram. Its 1996 curriculum was rigorous and up to date including a fieldworkcomponent in approved libraries and organizations that demonstrate all themajor functions and services expected of a library or information agency, ade-quate resources, and at least one full time LIS professional willing to supervisethe students (Alqudsi-Ghabra & al-Ansari, 1998). In 2005, it began to offer aminor for undergraduate studies and, by 2011, 188 students had graduated fromthe MLIS program and 235 had completed the minor. In 2012 there were 14faculty members in the department (Randi, 2013). The Public Authority programis mostly taught in Arabic with some English while the newer program at KuwaitUniversity is completely taught in English, perhaps responding to the call fora more universal language in the interests of globalization and internationalcommerce.

Despite a strong beginning, a 2006 evaluative study of the master’s programat Kuwait University identified curricular deficiencies that were believed toinhibit career opportunities, such as information and communication technol-ogy, business, LIS skills and soft skills like teamwork, presentation skills, public



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relations and marketing (Rehman, 2008b). The study technique used focusgroups of professionals and employers from the public and private sector plusstudents and graduates of the program. Recommendations included the creationof career tracks and internships, strengthening technical capacity and encoura-ging a shift in the mindset of graduates to seek opportunities in diverse worksettings, a name change for the department (the term “library” translates intoArabic as a low status organization), collaboration with the national profes-sional association, the creation of information literacy initiatives, and a profes-sional development program. There is a need for more faculty development andgreater collaboration with IT, MIS and business degree programs on campus.One of the study authors (Rehman) on the basis of his earlier studies suggeststhe nine programs in the region would benefit from each other’s experiencesand from examining two Saudi LIS programs (at King Saud and Umm al-QuraUniversities) – schools that have shifted their focus toward the non-libraryemployment market with good success.

An earlier study of LIS professionals focused more specifically on informa-tion and communication technologies (ICT) skills and urged the now familiarlitany of new coursework, new teaching and learning methods, use of externalstandards for professional associations for curriculum revision, greater colla-boration with employers and development of internship opportunities beyondlibraries (Buarki et al., 2009). The need for greater motivation for changes wasalso mentioned. The authors followed up their earlier study with a review ofthe specific ICT skills needed (Buarki, Hepworth & Murray, 2011).

Rehman & Sumait (2010) identified some issues relative to the curriculumredesign taking place in the master’s program that Rehman directed: changingthe name to “information management” in place of library and informationstudies, adding specialization tracks in librarianship, information management,information technology (IT) applications and knowledge management, andadding a project or thesis culminating requirement to strengthen the researchand creation aspect of the program. They noted that changes in the curriculumcaused some conflict with two other IT-related departments which were resolvedthrough meetings and by cross-listing courses and allowing students to takecourses in one another’s department.

Oman

The Sultanate of Oman, an absolute monarchy, is ethnically diverse, with over12 different languages spoken. The 2010 UNDP report ranked Oman as the mostimproved nation over the preceding 40 years (UNDP, 2002). In 1970, Sultan



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Qaboos came to power and gave high priority to education in order to develop adomestic workforce. A new university named for him opened in 1986, and in1987 an Information Studies program began within the College of Arts andSocial Sciences, offering coursework in both Arabic and English. The depart-ment offers three programs: the bachelor’s and a master’s in LIS, and a HigherDiploma in Medical Librarianship. A recent study of the curriculum found onlytwo new IT-related courses added between 2002 and 2011, but found the programworking to keep up with technological developments to better prepare studentsfor jobs (Sleem & Al-Suqri, 2012).

Qatar

The State of Qatar is an absolute monarchy that was a British Protectorate until1971. It sits on a small peninsula surrounded on three sides by the PersianGulf and by Saudi Arabia to the south. It is one of the world’s richest countriesper capita and is currently undergoing a remarkable transformation under aNational Vision 2030 plan in order to achieve an advanced, sustainable, anddiversified economy. Qatar is an influential player in the Arab World and itsnews group, Al Jazeera, is internationally known and respected. Qatar has apopulation of 2.25 million people, but only 250,000 are citizens; the rest are for-eigners who live and work in the State. Qatar is reforming its school educationthrough a contract with the RAND Corporation, and has built an “EducationCity” which hosts a number of branches of well-known US universities offeringa number of professional programs such as journalism, engineering, foreignservice, Islamic studies, and medicine.

Library science education in Qatar started in 1977 as a minor within ahistory major in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Universityof Qatar. In 1988 the minor was upgraded to a 36-credit hour postgraduatediploma program and by 1996, 35 students had graduated from it. In 1998, theUniversity decided to establish an LIS department and replaced the postgradu-ate program with a BA program. From 2001–2006, the department graduated394 students, more than two-thirds of which ended up working in the public/government sector and 13% in the private sector. The remainder were mostlyfemales whose parents or spouses did not want (or did not allow) them to work.In 2004 the department was merged with the Department of Communication(Hasanayn, 2007). The LIS program finally closed in the late 2000s.

In 2013, a new LIS program in Qatar was founded within the Qatar Educa-tion City. This program from University College London is taught in English,as are programs in most of the foreign university branches in the country.



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A brochure describing the program states that it will be “developed within thebroader context provided by the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library,and the growing cultural and information environment in Qatar” (UCL, Qatar,2014a and 2014b). External accreditation is being sought through the CharteredInstitute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and, if received, thisLIS program will be the first in the Arab world accredited by an outside agency.

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, created in 1932, is the second largest Arab stateby land area (after Algeria), with a population of 27 million Saudi nationals and5 million foreigners. Its position as the world’s largest oil exporter makes it oneof the 20 most powerful countries in the world and one of the wealthiest as well.It ranks as a regional power and maintains hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula.Education is free at all levels. Classes are separated by gender. Higher educa-tion has expanded rapidly with large numbers of universities and collegesfounded since 2000. Saudi Arabia boasts two world class universities: KingAbdulaziz and King Saud (Times Higher Education, 2014), both of which haveLIS programs.

We identified six LIS programs in the country. Most are in very large univer-sities (more than 50,000 students). One is a woman’s program at the Universityof Dammam founded in 2010. The language of instruction is Arabic, as is truefor most of the other programs. Two programs that describe themselves as Infor-mation Science programs are at King Abdulaziz University and King Saud Uni-versity. These programs indicate that they offer courses in both Arabic andEnglish. Riyadh, the capital, boasts four universities. In addition to King Abdu-laziz University, the Imam Muhammed ibn Saud Islamic University, and KingSaud University (only male students), the first woman’s university and thelargest women-only university in the world, Princess Noura bint AbdulrahmanUniversity (formerly the Girls College of Arts), is also in Riyadh. It has an LISprogram in the College of Art and an LIS bachelor’s program in the College ofComputer and Information Science. Sources of information about LIS educationin Saudi Arabia are limited and somewhat dated; the most recent article weretrieved was a brief summary from 1998 (Alsereihy, 1998).

To tackle the twin problems of extremism and an inadequate university edu-cation for a modern economy, the government has initiated a program with asubstantial budget of approximately two billion dollars US with the aim of movingteaching away from religion toward more secular subjects and from traditionalSaudi methods of memorization and rote learning and toward encouraging



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a more analytic and problem-solving curriculum (Lindsey, 2010). In 2009 anexpert on girls’ education, Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman, became the firstwoman minister in Saudi Arabia. Women comprise 60% of Saudi Arabia’s collegeenrollment but only 21% of its workforce.

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven principalities ruled byhereditary emirs, which became independent of their status as British Protecto-rates in 1971. The first President of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed, set a policy of shift-ing revenues into healthcare, education and infrastructure. This policy hasserved the country well. The literacy rate is very high (90%). Demographically,the population is diverse with less than 20% identified as UAE nationals. Immi-grants make up more than 80% of the total population according to UN data(2013). Because of the number of immigrants, the male/female ratio is also veryhigh: seven males for every three females; the difference is particularly markedin the age range from 25–54 (61% of the population) with 2,639,018 males andonly 820,915 females (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014).

In 2008, Boumarafi pointed out that libraries and information centers in theEmirates largely depended on expatriates and foreign librarians. He urged theneed for training and professional programs and described the early history of adiploma program for girls in the Higher Colleges of Technology in Sharjah andAl Ain, although neither program flourished. In 2006 the Community College atthe University of Sharjah offered diploma programs to prepare semi-profes-sionals but the programs lacked library resources, computer labs, and qualifiedinstructors. He estimated that over 230 professionals were needed for academiclibrary positions and nearly 1,300 for school libraries plus hundreds of public,special and departmental librarians. He urged the establishment of a master’sprogram (Boumarafi, 2008).

Government-supported higher education institutions includes Zayed Univer-sity, formerly a women’s university but now coeducational, and many HigherColleges of Technology, plus research centers and institutes, and a dedicatededucation zone designated the Dubai Knowledge Village, where a substantialnumber of international universities including Tufts, George Mason, Massachu-setts Institute of Technology, New York University, the Sorbonne, among others,have established local branches. Collaborative educational enterprises, like theGulf Medical University and Dubai Knowledge Village, an educational free tradezone in Dubai, offer more educational opportunities with the goal of buildingthe capacity of the local workforce and growing their own faculty.



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A feasibility study for a graduate program in Information Management wasrecently completed for Zayed University (Zayed University, 2013). Responding toa state directive, the emphasis was on opportunities for Emirati employmentpointing to an Omani program as a model and citing three prior LIS programproposals from 2009–2010. The report from employers and potential studentsfound great enthusiasm for the development of a high quality program but reser-vations were expressed based on “current poor experience of many Emiratistudents with library services” and a perception that “many Emirati would beunwilling to work in library and information management organizations wherethe working conditions are unlikely to be equivalent to those in governmentdepartments” (Zayed University, 2013, p. 27). No action has been taken on theprogram to date.

An earlier design for a new private university, proposed by a group ofnationals and expatriates, that would offer education for lower tuition than thatat the other private universities, also failed to come into existence. Aman andMika describe a design for an LIS bachelor’s program for this proposed univer-sity using model curriculum recommendations from the Information ResourcesManagement Association and UNESCO’s framework for a curriculum in infor-matics and containing a rigorous evaluation and assessment process (Aman &Mika, 2004).

However, one new LIS program has been established in 2012 in the Collegeof Computer Information Technology of the American University in the Emirates,a private university. It offers both a Bachelor of Science in Information Technol-ogy Management and a 36-semester hour LIS master’s degree. The programs areoffered in English and delivered on a full-time basis on the Dubai InternationalAcademic City campus. The undergraduate program is “web-centric and allowsa wide usage of information technology” (American University in the Emirates,2014a). The master’s program lists an array of career opportunities from librarymanagement to information analyst in both public and private sectors andincludes a mandatory internship (American University in the Emirates, 2014b).

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen occupies the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula andis the second largest country in the region. Yemen has a troubled history with along civil war between North and South Yemen which was resolved in 1990when the unified Republic of Yemen was proclaimed. Additional serious politi-cal upheaval occurred in 2011. The country is currently in a transitional periodof political reforms (BBC News Middle East, 2014). Before LIS programs were



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founded in Yemen, library training was provided by local and foreign specialistsunder the auspices of the UNESCO, the British Council, regional organizations,the Ministry of Culture and Education, other government agencies, and thecentral libraries of local universities, among others. Yemen also relied heavilyon sending its own library staff to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq,as well as the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and India to pursuebachelor’s and advanced degrees in the field and make up for the lack of LISprograms in the country. This was done occasionally from the 1970s until thefirst bachelor’s degree program was founded at the University of Sana’a in 1995.During its first five years, the LIS program at Sana’a University enrolled 624 stu-dents. Currently, it offers bachelor’s, master’s, postgraduate, and PhD programsin the field. The other LIS program in the country, which was established in2001 at the University of Aden offers both the bachelor’s and master’s degrees.Both programs are housed in Colleges of Arts.6

Iraq

The Republic of Iraq is bounded to the east by Iran, on the north by Turkey, onthe west by Jordan and Syria and on the south by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In1920 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations determined thepresent borders of Iraq and placed the country under the authority of the UnitedKingdom. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gainedindependence from Great Britain in 1932. In 1958 the monarchy was overthrownand the Republic of Iraq was created. The Ba’ath Party controlled Iraq from 1968until 2003, when a multinational force led by the US and Britain invaded Iraqand Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party were removed from power. The over-throw of Saddam and the invasion of the country were accompanied by devas-tating losses of human life plus the looting of many libraries and the burningof parts of the National Library and Archive. The already weak economy wasalmost completely destroyed by the 2003 invasion and the subsequent violence.Slowly, Iraq is rebuilding its society. Supplies of water, electricity and othernecessities are still below what is needed. As Saad Eskander, director of the IraqNational Library and Archive, wrote, “We forgot a long time ago what situationconstitutes normal and what situation does not. [Since the American troop with-drawal last year], life has not changed for the overwhelming majority of the

6 Translated and paraphrased from the blog of the Department of Library and Information Science,University of Sana’a – http://www.lisyemen.somee.com/about1.asp. Accessed July 22, 2014.



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population, especially for the poor. Senseless atrocities, indiscriminate destruc-tion, and blind hatred are always there; they are part of our lives” (Kniffel, 2012,p. 43).

LIS education in Iraq is being treated individually in this chapter becausethe devastating impact of the recent conflicts on libraries and library educationmake it a special case; in effect, the knowledge infrastructure of this country hasbeen destroyed (Mousawi, 2013). However, Iraq does not stand alone in havingits cultural institutions ravaged by civil unrest, terrorism and war. In many otherArab countries, library education has been damaged by unrest of various types.For example, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria have allencountered disorder and instability. War, terrorism, and other acts of violenceaffect all sectors of society, and education is often one of the most affected. Thephysical destruction of libraries and universities and the ongoing impact of theconflict on infrastructure and the day-to-day life in Iraq continue to have graveafter-effects on LIS education.

Despite the ancient libraries that had existed there, Iraq did not begin devel-oping modern libraries until the early 20th century. Its National Library origi-nated in 1921. Library training started under the supervision of the UNESCO in1953 with workshops that lasted from three months to two years. Almost imme-diately after it was founded in 1960, the central library of the University ofBaghdad started to offer three month- and six month-long training workshopsfollowed by longer ones which led to the establishment of a postgraduate LISprogram in 1972. By the mid-1970s, there were 110 public libraries, three aca-demic libraries, and almost 5,000 school libraries (Al-Kindilchie, 1977). A 1979UNESCO report recounted a four-fold increase in the total number of libraries inthe country since 1959–1960 (Kalia, 1979). However, that same report points outdeficiencies in the libraries. There was no national coordinating agency to poolresources and services. In addition, existing resources were underutilized, forexample public libraries did not lend freely but required any borrower to depositan amount equal to the value of a book before it was lent (Kalia, 1979). Despitethese problems, through the 1980s “Iraq’s largest libraries and archives wererelatively well preserved, adequately if unevenly cataloged and administered bya trained cadre of employees” (Khoury, 2003). By the early-1990s, there were489 public libraries, 117 academic libraries, and almost 11,000 school librariesin the country (Al-Kindilchie, 1994).

During the war with Iran, and following the invasion of Kuwait, the GulfWar and the imposition of U.N. sanctions on Iraq, conditions in Iraqi librariesdeteriorated. Funding to libraries was cut, and it became more difficult for themto function. The Saddam regime imposed censorship on collections. At theNational Library, for instance, many publication and records were removed



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from the stacks and placed in restricted areas where readers had no access. Formore than 20 years, the National Library was not able to purchase any publica-tions from abroad (Kingley, 2013). The deteriorating conditions in Iraq were wor-sened by the events occurring after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.The looting and burning of not only the National Library but other libraries andcultural institutions have been well documented. Although the libraries in Iraqhave made some progress in the last decade they are still suffering the effects oflong neglect and isolation with often limited collections and damaged buildingsand equipment. Libraries have been low priority in the overall restoration anddevelopment of Iraq. To rebuild these libraries, Iraq needs well-educated librar-ians who are able to bring leadership to the rebuilding effort. Unfortunately, LISeducation was just as hard hit as the libraries. Just as the libraries before 1980seemed to be progressing and becoming modernized, so did library education.

The first LIS program in Iraq was founded in 1970 in the Library of al-Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad. However, the program offered only a two-year diploma degree; it started its bachelor’s degree program in 1974 (Itayem &al-Akhras, 1984). So, for the purposes of this chapter, the history of LIS educa-tion in Iraq can be traced back to 1972 when the University of Baghdad, withsupport from UNESCO and UNDP, started to offer a one-year postgraduatediploma in the field. This program, however, was transferred to al-MustansiriyahUniversity in 1977 and was finally closed in 1982. Soon after the transfer, the al-Mustansiriyah University changed the status of its LIS program from a section inthe Library into a full-fledged department within the College of Arts with respon-sibility to run both the University of Baghdad and al-Mustansiriyah LIS pro-grams (Itayem & al-Akhras, 1984). Then in 1983, the University of Basrah startedto offer a bachelor’s degree in LIS and in 1996 the University of Mosul followedsuit. All three programs had the same curricula. In 1992, al-Mustansiriyah beganto offer both the master’s and doctoral degrees in LIS; these are still active today.At one time, both Basrah and Mosul offered master’s degrees but were forced todiscontinue them because of lack of qualified faculty (Khairi, 2010). In addition tothe three programs above, there are two technical institutes that offer a two-yeardiploma in library science. According to Johnson, the LIS education in Iraq was atone time among the best in the Arab world (Johnson, 2005, p. 254). In the quarterof a century since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraqi library education haslagged behind its counterparts in the rest of the Arab world. The isolation thatfollowed the imposition of sanctions had a detrimental effect on both librariesand LIS education. As one observer wrote, “The whole library profession becameslowly de-professionalized as faculty lost contact with new developments, particu-larly in automation, and as talented professionals – as happened across academiaand the professions – chose to move abroad” (Spurr, 2005).



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Khairi, a faculty member from al-Mustansiriyah, described the grim condi-tions in the LIS schools. All lost furniture and equipment and many had theirbuildings damaged in the 2003 overthrow. Dangerous conditions existed in allthe universities. For example, at al-Mustansiriyah University, one of the univer-sity’s professors (not from the LIS Department) was assassinated, two otherswere shot and survived, and many others were threatened. Many students andfaculty left the universities because of the unsafe conditions (Khairi, 2010).A large number of the LIS faculty members left Iraq to teach abroad. It is difficultto find statistics about exactly how many students and faculty any of these pro-grams have at present.

According to Zubaydi as of 2001, there were 25 faculty members in thesethree programs, all graduates of institutions in Iraq (56%), United States (40%),and Egypt (4%). Only 16% of all 25 faculty members had doctoral degrees; theremaining faculty had either a postgraduate LIS degree (4%) or an MLS (80%). All ofthe faculty members had academic backgrounds in LIS or arts and humanities(i.e., none came from a technology, science, or medical background). According tothese 25 faculty members, in 2001 the most significant problem of LIS education inIraq was the quality and motivation of the students, who were admitted to the pro-grams with low GPAs. To this problem are additional difficulties of lack of libraryand computing resources, lack of scholarly activities among the faculty, and lack ofpracticum and internship venues. The students enrolled in Iraqi LIS programs areusually those who have the lowest high-school GPAs accepted for admission to theColleges of Arts and, by extension, the universities. With the lack of library and com-puting resources, both faculty and students are denied access to tools and materialsthat would keep them up-to-date with progress in the field (Zubaydi, 2001).

LIS education in Iraq was essentially isolated from the rest of the worldfrom the mid-1980s to recent times (Khairi, 2010). An entire generation in Iraqhas never spent time abroad, attended international conferences or built con-nections with colleagues outside of their own country (Johnson, 2005).

The war with Iran had drained the state budget, and funds for study abroad graduallydried up. The last students to take postgraduate courses in Britain and the U.S.A. probablycompleted them in about 1988, and many of the librarians who were trained abroad beforethen have since left Iraq for better-paid jobs or personal security elsewhere… . The calibreand enthusiasm of the Iraqi teachers of Librarianship and Information Sciences have beentaxed to the full as they struggled to develop their courses while coping with decliningresources. No books about Librarianship and Information Sciences were bought afterabout 1985, and all foreign journal subscriptions ceased in 1992 (Johnson, 2005, p. 253).

There have been a number of efforts to provide help to the struggling LISprograms in Iraq, but no systematic, long-term plans have been developed.However, if Iraq is to rebuild its libraries and archives and reconstruct its



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shattered knowledge infrastructure, it must at the same time develop a strongsystem to educate the information professionals who will make the rebuildingeffort possible.

The Levant

The Levant is a geographic and cultural region located on the Eastern Mediterra-nean. Today, it includes six countries or states: Cyprus and Israel, which are notincluded in this chapter, as well as the four Arab states of Jordan, Lebanon,Palestine, and Syria. The Levant is one of the most ethnically and religiouslydiverse regions of the world. It is home to Arabs, Armenians, Jews, and Kurds,among many others. While Sunni and Shi’i Muslims make up the majority ofthe population, the region also includes millions of Christians, Jews, and size-able numbers of people from many other religions and sects. Arabic, Hebrew,Kurdish, and Armenian are the predominant languages in the region.

The region was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th centuryuntil 1918. Following the collapse of the Empire after World War I, Lebanonand Syria were mandated to France until their independence in 1943. Jordanand the Palestinian territories were mandated to Great Britain until 1946 and1948 respectively. With the announcement by Britain that it would unilaterallywithdraw from the Mandate on 15 May 1948, Israel declared its independenceon May 14, 1948, and on the following day the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began.

With the exception of Lebanon which had several professionally trainedlibrarians with LIS degrees from France and the U.S.A., interest in library train-ing was almost non-existent in the Arab countries of the Levant until the 1950s.As in several other Arab countries, library training and education in the Levantduring the three decades after independence was largely limited to attendingshort courses or workshops in European countries or those provided by locallibraries or government agencies as well as attending and pursuing libraryscience degrees at Cairo University. The first LIS degree programs in the Levantwere founded in Lebanon in 1975 and Jordan in 1977. The first program in Syriawas founded in 1984 and in the State of Palestine in 1997. The following is abrief overview of LIS education in each of the Arab countries of the Levant.

Jordan

Jordan was founded under a British mandate after the collapse of the OttomanEmpire during World War I. It gained independence in 1946. Although its people



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are considered among the most educated in the Arab world, Jordan had no aca-demic or major public libraries until the early 1950s. Awareness of the need forlibraries began after a UNESCO visit to the country in 1955 which initiated themodern library movement there. Then in the first half of the 1960s, three majorevents helped solidify this movement, namely, the founding of the AmmanPublic Library in 1960, the University of Jordan in 1962, and the Jordan LibraryAssociation in 1963. The latter is one of the most active in the Arab world andone which has had profound influence in the country, especially through itslibrary training programs and publications (Mansour, 1993) as well as the startof an LIS diploma program in 1965 at the Teachers College in Amman. Thediploma program, however, graduated only one group of students and folded in1967 because of lack of qualified instructors.

Hundreds of small public and school libraries were founded in the countryin the next decade or so. As a result of a huge shortage of trained library person-nel for these libraries, the University of Jordan started a postgraduate diplomaprogram in LIS in 1977. This program went through several revisions: in 1979 bya group of experts from the British Council and UNESCO, from 1982 to 1984 byfaculty from al-Mustansiriyah University of Iraq, in 1986 by its own faculty upontheir return from the U.S.A. after completing doctoral education in the field,and in 1992 when the program was down-graded from a 33-credit hour programto a one-year 24 credit hour “Vocational Diploma in Library and InformationScience.” The program folded in 1995 because of lack of a sufficient number ofqualified faculty members. Important to note here is that when the British andDanish faculty revised the program in 1979, they introduced an English examas part of the admission requirements to ensure that admitted students hadenough language proficiency to read assigned material which were largely inEnglish because Arabic ones were lacking and out-of-date. However, as a resultof student protest, the end of UNESCO’s support, as well as the departure of allBritish and Danish faculty members from the program, the English exam admis-sion requirement was cancelled. According to Alian (2002) major problems thatthis program encountered included: unclear and unrealistic objectives, poor cur-riculum and inconsistency with the latest developments in the field, lack of sta-bility in the curriculum, lack of any kind of admission criteria or restrictions,oversight of the market needs, and paucity of faculty members with advancedskills, expertise, and knowledge, as well as use of traditional and obsoleteteaching methods. Nevertheless, the program graduated over 300 people whocontributed significantly to the development of libraries and the library profes-sion in Jordan. Many of the graduates of the program went on to pursue gradu-ate degrees in the U.K. and the U.S.A. (Alian, 2002).



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After four years without an LIS program in the country, the Balqa AppliedUniversity founded the first full undergraduate LIS degree program in thecountry in 1999, followed by similar programs at Balqa’s satellite colleges: Prin-cess Alia University College (2003), Irbid University College (2003), and al-KarakUniversity College (2007). These three colleges, Balqa Applied University, andseveral other university colleges used to offer diplomas in LIS during the 1980sand 1990s. In 2000, both Philadelphia University Jordan and Zarqa Private Uni-versity started to offer a bachelor’s degree in the field, and in 2006 al-HusseinBin Talal University established its undergraduate program in LIS, which cur-rently enrolls 300 students and has six full-time faculty members (four withPhDs). The public university of Balqa managed to enroll 162 students in its firsttwo years, whereas the more expensive private universities of Philadelphia andZarqa managed to attract only a total of 57 students (Philadelphia’s programceased in 2011). Zarqa, however, currently enrolls nearly 400 students and hasfour full-time faculty members. The Higher Education Council has the responsi-bility for setting standards for LIS education in the country (Younis, 2002).

Perhaps the most significant development in LIS education in Jordan waswhen the University of Jordan decided in 2006 to start a master’s programin the field, and postgraduate and undergraduate degree programs in 2007.According to the Department’s website, its master’s program has so far gradu-ated more than 30 students, many of whom are now in key positions in Jordanand neighboring countries. The Department currently includes six full-timefaculty members (four professors, one associate professor, and one lecturer).The bachelor’s degree in all LIS programs in the country requires the completionof 132 credit hours: 78–90 credits in LIS and information technology and 42–54credits in general education. The MLS degree requires the completion of 33credit hours without thesis or 24 credits with thesis (Younis, 2013).

Lebanon

Modern librarianship in Lebanon started in the 18th century with monasticlibraries and began to flourish in the 19th century with the founding of two ofthe oldest and most prominent universities in the Arab world: the American Uni-versity of Beirut (1866) and Université Saint-Joseph (1875). Although severalother libraries have been founded in the country since then (e.g., the LebaneseNational Library in 1922 and many private and American and French schoollibraries), libraries started to emerge in significant numbers in Lebanon only inthe 1960s – a trend that was hindered by a 15-year civil war that ended in 1989.



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Today, Lebanon is home to hundreds of public, school, and special libraries andover 50 academic libraries distributed among one public and over 40 private col-leges and universities.

College or professional level library training in Lebanon started in the1960s. During a one-month visit in 1960, a UNESCO expert provided a trainingsession in cataloging at the National Library in Beirut and submitted a proposalto UNESCO recommending the establishment of a library school in a universityto include a graduate program. Between 1962 and 1965, the American Universityof Beirut Libraries offered six-week long summer courses in basic and medicallibrarianship, which were attended by nearly one hundred people from allover the Middle East. This was followed in 1968 by annual summer workshopsgiven to local library staff at Beirut College for Women (later named Beirut Uni-versity College and more recently the Lebanese American University). In 1970,these workshops were developed into a 2-year long Library Technician Programleading to an Associate degree in the field (Hafez, 1986). This program contin-ued until the late 1990s. Then, just before the 1975–1989 civil war started in thecountry, the first bachelor’s degree program was founded, at the LebaneseUniversity.

Unlike in the great majority of Arab countries where the LIS programs are/were affiliated within Colleges of Arts, Humanities, or Education, the program atthe Lebanese University was established and continues to maintain full collegeor school status under the umbrella of the Faculty of Information and Documen-tation. While the focus was initially on the journalistic type of information, moreLIS courses were introduced into the curriculum as time passed. By 1993, theprogram had graduated 200 students and is currently offering the bachelor’s,master’s, and doctoral degrees and enrolls more than 200 students. Given thepopularity of the field in the country, two more programs were founded atprivate universities: in 1996 at the University of Balamand, and in 2005 at BeirutArab University (Muhyiddin, 2004). In large part because these programs had tocompete against a virtually tuition-free LIS program at the Lebanese University,the program at Balamand was frozen for over a decade before it reopened in2012 under the name of the Faculty of Library and Information Studies withbachelor’s and master’s programs in LIS. The current program at Balamand isstill inactive, however, because of lack of students.

Until recently, librarians from prominent universities in the country hadalways considered the LIS programs in Lebanon to be weak, graduating educa-tionally and professionally incompetent individuals who could not operate inde-pendently and had serious language deficiencies; this was largely because for



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nearly 30 years the curriculum at the Lebanese University did not change much,and that there was a lack of planning and mismatch between market needs andthe LIS curriculum, lack of use of modern teaching and instruction technologiesand methods, lack of modern computer labs and libraries, lack of training oppor-tunities, poor educational level of enrolled students, and the ignorance of thesociety about the significance of the LIS profession (Muhyiddin, 2004). With thegradual improvement in the curricula of the LIS program at the Lebanese Univer-sity over the past decade or so (revised twice in this period), the hiring of manyfaculty with doctoral degrees from France, the U.K., and the U.S.A., the engage-ment of students in many internships and training opportunities before gradua-tion, and the significant improvement in the activities of the Lebanese LibraryAssociation, LIS graduates of the Lebanese University began to be more attractiveto employers. Although they are yet to lead any major library in the country, LISgraduates of the Lebanese University today form a sizeable proportion of profes-sional librarians in the main libraries in the country.

Palestine

The State of Palestine is a sovereign state in the Levant that is recognized by theUnited Nations. Its independence was declared on 15 November 1988 by thePalestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and its government-in-exile was thenlocated in Algiers. It claims sovereignty over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,and has designated Jerusalem as its capital. Most of the areas claimed for theState of Palestine have been occupied by Israel since 1967 in the aftermath ofthe Six-Day War, with the Palestinian Authority exercising socio-political admin-istration since 1993 in limited areas. In 2012, it was granted observer status bythe United Nations.

The tradition of libraries in Palestine is old with mosque and family librarieshaving played significant cultural and historical roles, but it was only as of themid-1990s that the modern library movement started in the region. Followingthe Oslo Accords which were signed in 1993 and 1995, a number of universitiesand libraries started to emerge in Palestine, and so did the need for professionallibrarians. Despite the founding of an undergraduate LIS program in 1997 inal-Aqsa University and in 2001 at the Universal Studies Academy, both in GazaCity, Khader (2012) who provided a detailed account of the development oflibraries in Palestine and their challenges and obstacles, recommended thefounding of more LIS schools to train and produce much needed professionallibrarians.



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Syria

Similarly to Lebanon and Palestine, LIS education in Syria has received littleattention in the literature. According to Lahham (1993) and ‘Abd al-’Alim (1995),until 1984 Syrian librarians generally received their training abroad (mainlyEgypt) because of lack of a library school in the country. In that year, when thecountry had 75 trained professional librarians and nearly 1,000 libraries, thefirst LIS program was founded at Damascus University and was affiliated withthe Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The goal was to prepare the necessary spe-cialized workforce to manage and lead the country’s libraries. By 1990, theprogram had 40 graduates and had enrolled 450 students. Admission was, andstill is, limited to those students with a GPA at a certain level that changesfrom one year to the next depending on scores received by students in thenational high school test. The degree requires the completion, over a period offour years, of courses in management of libraries and information centers, refer-ence, collection development, technical services, indexing and abstracting,special libraries, digital libraries, databases, information storage and retrieval,knowledge management, and information economy. These are in addition tocourses in research methods, statistics, cognitive science, information technol-ogy, English language learning, Arabic language learning, and a course onnationalist socialist culture, which was required in the first year of the program(Younis, 2013). A similar undergraduate program was established in Syria in2007 at the University of Tishreen, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Then in2008, the University of Damascus started to offer the MLS degree in library man-agement and information services as well as in information storage and retrie-val. The master’s degree is a two-year program consisting of coursework duringthe first year and a thesis in the second year.

According to ‘Assafin (1998, 2004), the undergraduate program at the Uni-versity of Damascus suffers from the fact that it focuses so much on non-LIScourses (e.g., courses on the history of civilization, literature, and philosophy),theoretical or non-practice-based courses, library rather than library and infor-mation science-related courses, and on textbooks that are not only old but alsooverlap in content. The program also suffers from the following problems: only10% of its LIS courses are in the area of information services; fewer than one-fourth of its faculty members are holders of doctoral degrees (all from Russiaand Egypt); the program admits such a huge number of students that makes itdifficult to find training opportunities for them all, let alone jobs; and the LISdepartment lacks the library and computing resources necessary for providingquality LIS education. Muhanna (2011), however, claims that the LIS program at



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the University of Damascus is constantly improving and that its curriculum hasgone through three major revisions, the last being in 2008. It is believed that theLIS program at the University of Tishreen has adopted the most recent curricu-lum of the program at the University of Damascus.

Northeast Africa and the Comoros

The remaining countries in the Arab League are located in Northeast Africaand the Indian Ocean. Both the Comoros and Djibouti are small republics withfewer than one million inhabitants in each. They were colonized by France andbecame independent in 1975 and 1977, respectively. Arabic and French are thetwo predominant languages and Islam is their main religion. The countries havevery few libraries and neither has a library professional association. A compre-hensive survey of the literature did not identify any indications of library train-ing or education there; however, both have national documentation centers. TheUnion of Comoros, a federal republic comprising an island archipelago betweenMadagascar and Tanzania, has a national library. Djibouti, in the horn of Africaat the mouth of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, does not have a nationallibrary, but has an academic library at the University of Djibouti and a fewspecial and governmental libraries.

Somalia

The Federal Republic of Somalia, has a population of approximately 11 millionpeople; Arabic is the official language and Islam the official religion. The countrywas created in 1960 by the merger of a former British protectorate and an Italiancolony. Since its independence, Somalia has encountered political, economic,and cultural instability and has undergone internal armed conflicts for almostthree decades. Despite its past history of being in a near state of anarchy, thecountry is in the process of establishing a federal parliamentary republic. Thecountry’s national library was established in 1976 but closed in the 1990s. Atpresent there is an effort underway to rebuild the national library in Mogadishu.This library, which would also serve a public library for the city, is the firstlibrary to be built in Somalia since the civil war started in 1991 (Shepherd, 2013).Just as in the Comoros and Djibouti, there is no indication that any LIS programsexist in the country.



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Sudan

The Republic of the Sudan is located in the Nile Valley. Its predominant religionis Islam. Almost one-fifth of its 40 million population lives below the interna-tional poverty line, which means living on less than $1.25 per day. Sudan wascolonized by the British from 1898 to 1956. After independence it became knownas the Republic of the Sudan. In 2005, and after several years of rampant ethnicstrife and internal conflicts, a peace agreement between the north (largelyMuslim) and the south (largely Christian and adherents of several African reli-gions) was signed, and the south was split off and became independent in 2011and named the Republic of South Sudan.

The Republic of the Sudan is currently the third largest Arab country interms of both area and population. Higher education in the country began in the1940s at Gordon Memorial College which was originally founded as a primaryschool in 1902. In 1948, there were 262 students at the Gordon Memorial College.In 1951 it merged with the Kitchener School of Medicine (founded in 1924) andwas renamed University College Khartoum with the University of London settingthe examinations and awarding the degrees. When the country gained indepen-dence in 1956, the University College became the fully independent University ofKhartoum which then enrolled a total of 1,633 students. Until the end of the1980s, there were only five universities in the Sudan, enrolling less than 10% ofthe high school graduates of the country. In 1989, a higher education revolutionwas announced and by the end of the 1990s, there were over 30 new public andprivate universities established in the country. The 40 or so universities in theSudan today enroll over 200,000 students annually. With the increase in thenumber of higher education institutions in the country, the number of LIS pro-grams also increased: from one in the 1960s to three in the 1980s, six in the1990s, and 10 in the 2000s.

Until the early 1960s, library professional development and training inthe Sudan benefited significantly from the British Council in Khartoum, whichregularly organized seminars and workshops in the field and funded severalrelevant consultancies. From 1961 until at least the 1990s, the University of Khar-toum’s Department of General Studies regularly offered training courses foremployees in libraries and archives. In 1966 the first LIS program was estab-lished at Omdurman Islamic University. The goal of the program was to prepareprofessionals to work in different types of libraries, archives, and informationcenters. The program was closed after the University was converted in 1969 intoa College of Arabic Language. The University reopened its doors in 1972 with allits previous Colleges and departments, including LIS. Initially, the program wasrun mainly by faculty from the University of Cairo with support from Sudanese



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faculty. In 1972, the Sudanese faculty took over and revised the program to meetthe specific needs of the Sudanese libraries and society. The curriculum was lastrevised in 1995, introducing information science related courses, such as infor-mation storage and retrieval, and launching the first master’s degree program inthe country. Despite graduating many librarians since 1972, by mid-1980s half ofthe country’s 14 higher education libraries still did not have professional librar-ians among their staff members. This was largely because librarianship was notan attractive career for young Sudanese, as the profession was rather obscure,and graduates of Omdurman University LIS program preferred to work in thelibraries of the oil-rich Arab states where there is a better work environment andmuch higher wages (Abdel Karim, 1985).

In 1986, a new undergraduate program was founded at the OmdurmanAhlia University, followed by one at the Neelain University (which was formerlythe Khartoum branch of Cairo University), and a postgraduate diploma programat the University of Khartoum’s Centre for Information, Libraries, and Archives.The latter was merged in 1992 with the newly founded Department of Libraryand Information Science at the University of Khartoum, with degree programs atthe bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. By the year 2009, there were 10active LIS programs in Sudan (seven in the state of Khartoum). In 2013, the totalnumber of full-time faculty teaching at these 10 programs was 84 (65% with doc-toral degrees and 35% with master degrees). Eight of the chairpersons of the pro-grams held doctoral degrees and two held only a master’s degree. (‘Alim, 2013)

In the early 1990s, when there were still only four LIS programs in theSudan, Wesley (1994) argued that teaching in these programs depended tooheavily on part-time input from practicing librarians. She further stated that themain problems of the LIS programs in the Sudan then included: (1) the scarcityof qualified staff; (2) poor library collections and scarcity of publications andteaching materials in Arabic; (3) poor resources and facilities; and (4) poor stateof development of the national information infrastructure. According to Amin(2013), similar problems seem to persist today. Based on a field survey of six LISprograms in the state of Khartoum, Ahmad & Muhammad Ali (2013) foundremarkable differences in the number of LIS credit hours that students completein order to obtain their bachelor degree and that the number of required infor-mation technology courses was minimal (10–15% of the total).



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Sum

maryof

theSitua

tion

Tab.

.:L

ISprog

ramsin

theArabStatesoffering

atleastaba

chelor’sde

gree

inthefield.

Coun

try

Institution

Colle

ge/Faculty

Dep

artm

ent

Year

Foun

ded*

Deg

ree

Prog

rams

Algeria

UniversitéBad

jiMok

htar

-Ann

aba

Arts,

Hum

anities,

andSocialS

cien

ces

LIS

BA;M

AAlgeria

UniversitéCon

stan

tine

Institut

deBiblio

thécon

omie

Institut

deBiblio

thécon

omie

BA;M

A;

PhD

Algeria

Universitéd’Alger

BA;M

A;

PhD

Algeria

Universitéde

Tébe

ssa

Hum

anitiesan

dSocialS

cien

ces

LibraryScien

ce

BA;M

AAlgeria

Universitéd’Oran

Hum

anities

Bibliothécon

omieetdo

cumentatio

n

BA;M

AEg

ypt

Ain

Sha

msUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA

Egyp

tAl-Azh

arUniversity-Assiut

ArabicLang

uage

-Boy

sLA

S

BA

Egyp

tAl-Azh

arUniversity-Cairo

Education-Boy

sLIS,

andInstructionalTechn

ologies

BA

Egyp

tAl-Azh

arUniversity-Cairo

Hum

anities-Girls

LAS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Egyp

tAl-Azh

arUniversity-Shb

eenEl-Kom

,AlM

inufiyah

ArabicLang

uage

-Boy

sLA

S

BA

Egyp

tAl-Azh

arUniversity-Tafahn

aEl-Ash

raaf,D

aqah

liaEd

ucation-Boy

sLIS,

andInstructionalTechn

ologies

BA

Egyp

tAlexand

riaUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Egyp

tAssiutUniversity

Arts

Library,Archives,and

Inform

ation

Science

BA;M

A

Egyp

tBen

haUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA;M

A

(con

tinu

ed)



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Tab.9.1:(con

tinu

ed)

Coun

try

Institution

Colle

ge/Faculty

Dep

artm

ent

Year

Foun

ded*

Deg

ree

Prog

rams

Egyp

tBen

i-Sue

fUniversity

Arts

LAS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Egyp

tCairo

University

Arts

LibraryScien

ce,A

rchives,

andIT

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDEg

ypt

Fayo

umUniversity

Arts

LAS

BA

Egyp

tHelwan

University

Arts

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDEg

ypt

Kafrelshe

ikhUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA

Egyp

tMan

souraUniversity

Arts

Archivesan

dLIS

BA

Egyp

tMen

oufiaUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDEg

ypt

Minia

University

Arts

LIS

BA

Egyp

tOctob

erUniversity

SocialS

cien

ces

Librariesan

dInform

ation

Systems

BA

Egyp

tSoh

agUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDEg

ypt

Sou

thValleyUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA

Egyp

tSue

zCan

alUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA

Egyp

tTantaUniversity

Arts

LAS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Iraq

Al-Mus

tans

iriyaUniversity

Arts

ILS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Iraq

**Universityof

Bag

hdad

Highe

rInstituteforLibraryan

dInform

ationStudies

LS

PGD

Iraq

Universityof

Basrah

Arts

Librariesan

dInform

ation

Systems

BA;M

A



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Tab.9.1:(con

tinu

ed)

Coun

try

Institution

Colle

ge/Faculty

Dep

artm

ent

Year

Foun

ded*

Deg

ree

Prog

rams

Iraq

Universityof

Mos

ulArts

LIS

BA;M

AJordan

Balqa

App

liedUniversity

Plan

ning

andMan

agem

ent

Libraryan

dInform

ation

Man

agem

ent

BA

Jordan

Al-Hus

sein

Bin

TalalU

niversity

Arts

Librariesan

dIT

BA

Jordan

**Ph

ilade

lphiaUniversityJordan

Adm

inistrativean

dFina

ncialS

cien

ces

LIS

BA

Jordan

Universityof

Jordan

Educationa

lScien

ces

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA

Jordan

ZarqaUniversity

Educationa

lScien

ces

LIS

BA

Kuw

ait

Kuw

aitUniversity

SocialS

cien

ces

LIS

MA

Kuw

ait

PublicAutho

rity

forApp

liedEd

ucation

andTraining

College

ofBasicEd

ucation

LIS

BA

Leba

non

BeirutArabUniversity

Arts

Kno

wledg

eMan

agem

entan

dInform

atics

BA;M

A

Leba

non*

*Leba

nese

American

University

Artsan

dScien

ces

Prog

ram

inLIS

BA

Leba

non

Leba

nese

University

Facultyof

Inform

ationan

dDocum

enta-

tion

BA;M

A;

PhD

Leba

non

Universityof

Balam

and

Facultyof

Libraryan

dInform

ation

Studies

BA;M

A

Liby

aLiby

anAcade

myforGradu

ateStudies

Sch

oolo

fHum

anities

Inform

ationStudies

MS;P

hDLiby

aAl-Jaba

lal-Gha

rbiU

niversity

Education

LIS

BA

Liby

aUniversityof

Ben

ghazi

Arts

LIS

BA

Liby

aUniversityof

Tripoli

Arts

LIS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Mauritan

iaUniversitéde

Nou

akch

ott

Artsan

dHum

anities

Biblio

thèq

ues,

Archiveset

Doc.

BA

(con

tinu

ed)



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Tab.9.1:(con

tinu

ed)

Coun

try

Institution

Colle

ge/Faculty

Dep

artm

ent

Year

Foun

ded*

Deg

ree

Prog

rams

Morocco

Écolede

sScien

cesde

l’Information

Sch

oolo

fInformationScien

ce

BA;M

AOman

SultanQab

oosUniversity

Artsan

dSocialS

cien

ces

Inform

ationStudies

BA;M

APa

lestine

Al-Aqs

aUniversity-G

aza

Artsan

dHum

anities

LibraryScien

ce

BA

Palestine

Universal

Studies

Acade

my

Artsan

dLetters

LIS

BA

Qatar

UniversityCollege

Lond

on-Qatar

Libraryan

dInform

ationStudies

MA

Qatar**

Universityof

Qatar

Hum

anitiesan

dSocialS

cien

ces

History

andLibrarians

hip

PGD

Sau

diArabia

Imam

Muh

ammad

IbnSau

dIslamic

University

Com

puteran

dInform

ationScien

ces

Inform

ationStudies

BA;M

A;

PhD

Sau

diArabia

KingAbd

ulazizUniversity

Artsan

dHum

anities

Inform

ationScien

ce

BA;M

A;

PhD

Sau

diArabia

KingSau

dUniversity

Arts

Inform

ationScien

ce

BA;M

A

Sau

diArabia

Princess

Nou

rahBintAbd

ulrahm

anUniversity

Arts

LIS

BA

Sau

diArabia

Umm

al-QuraUniversity

SocialS

cien

ces

Inform

ationScien

ce

BA

Sau

diArabia

Universityof

Dam

mam

Arts-Girls

Librariesan

dInform

ation

BA

Sud

anEl

Imam

ElMah

diUniversity

Arts

LAS

BA

Sud

anInternationa

lUniversityof

Africa

Arts

LIS

BA

Sud

anNee

lain

University

Arts

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDSud

anNee

lain

University

Com

puterScien

ceLibraryInform

ationSystems

BA

Sud

anOmdu

rman

Ahlia

University

Arts

LAS

BA

Sud

anOmdu

rman

IslamicUniversity

Arts

LAS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hD



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Tab.9.1:(con

tinu

ed)

Coun

try

Institution

Colle

ge/Faculty

Dep

artm

ent

Year

Foun

ded*

Deg

ree

Prog

rams

Sud

anUniversityof

Bah

riCom

mun

ityStudies

andRu

ral

Develop

men

tLIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDSud

anUniversityof

Don

gola

Artsan

dHum

anities

ILS

BA

Sud

anUniversityof

Gezira

Education-al-Hasah

isa

LIS

BA

Sud

an**

Universityof

Kha

rtou

mArts

Cen

terforLISan

dDocum

enta-

tion

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDSud

anUniversityof

Kha

rtou

mArts

LIS

BA;P

GD;

MA;P

hDSyria

Tish

reen

University

Artsan

dHum

anities

LibraryScien

ce

BA

Syria

Universityof

Dam

ascus

Artsan

dHum

anities

LIS

BA;M

A;

PhD

Tunisia**

Institut

depresse

etde

sscienc

esde

l’information

BA

Tunisia

Universitéde

laMan

ouba

Institut

Sup

erieur

deDocum

entation

deTu

nis

Biblio

thécon

omie

etdo

cumen

ta-

tion

BA;M

A

United

Arab

Emirates

American

Universityin

theEm

irates

Com

puterInform

ationTech

nology

LIS

MA

Yemen

San

a’aUniversity

Arts

LibraryScien

ce

BA;M

A;

PGD;P

hDYe

men

Universityof

Ade

nArts

LIS

BA;P

GD

*Re

fers

totheyear

theba

chelor,m

aster,po

stgrad

uate,o

rdo

ctoral

degree

prog

ram

started.

**Den

otes

prog

ramsthat

ceased

.ILS=Inform

ationan

dLibraryScien

ce;IT=Inform

ationTech

nology(ies);LA

S=Libraryan

dArchivalS

cien

ce;L

IS=Libraryan

dInform

ation

Scien

ce(s)



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We finished our absorbing and often exhilarating exploration of the develop-ment of LIS education in the Arab world with much admiration for what hadbeen accomplished in the less than half century since LIS education becamewidespread there. Today the LIS programs across the region (and, one mightadd, around the world) are in a period of evolution as they attempt to change tomeet the needs of modern information agencies. Although all of the programsshare some similarities, they differ in certain national and regional characteris-tics. For each of the geographic divisions that we adopted, a brief summary ofthe current situation is provided below.

Egypt

Egypt led the Arab world in the development of LIS education, and as a result ofits pioneering role, it influenced the development of LIS in the rest of the Arabworld, particularly in its focus on undergraduate education, the placement ofthe LIS program in the arts and humanities, and admission of students througha competitive national process that ranks school choice by examination outcome.Despite Egypt’s early leadership role in LIS education, at present, the political andeconomic problems confronting the country have impeded the Egyptian programsfrom keeping pace with some of the others in the region.

The Maghreb

A number of the LIS programs in the Maghreb are well established and the pro-grams in the area are diverse in scope, size, funding, and specializations. Theseprograms display much more heterogeneity than those found in most otherparts of the Arab world. For instance, unlike Egypt where all of the programsexcept one are situated in a College of Arts, the programs in the Maghreb havea variety of institutional homes and two of them, ISD in Tunisia and ESI inMorocco, are institutions that provide LIS education outside the organizationalstructure of a university. However, the major distinction that sets these programsapart is that, except for those in Libya, all the programs in the Maghreb are stillinfluenced by their French colonial history, and in many ways the systems ofhigher education in these countries are more like the ones in France than theyare like others in the Arab world. This continuing French influence is not sur-prising. After independence, France continued to provide both monetary andother types of support to the educational institutions in its former colonies.



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France sends one third of all its higher education aid to Northern Africa, and thetwo largest aid projects supported by the French Development Agency are inMorocco ($171.4 million) and Algeria ($141.5 million) (Bassett & Maldonado-Maldonado, 2009, p. 288) Many of the institutions in these countries have part-nerships with French universities, and many faculty members in the LIS pro-grams received their degrees in France. The LIS programs in Algeria, Mauritania,Morocco, and Tunisia use French as a language of instruction. Their programshave been based on the French model of LIS education, and now most of themare transitioning to the LMD degree system to conform to the Bologna process.At present, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia are all partner countries in theEU’s Tempus and Erasmus educational initiatives7; these partnerships alsopromote closer relationships and international cooperation (Croché & Charlier,2012; Johnson, 2013). It is impossible to predict how this cross-Mediterraneanalliance will progress, but indications are that interest is strong on both sides.Ironically, its colonial past has made it easier for the LIS programs in the Maghrebto overcome isolation and participate in the broader world of international LISeducation.

The Gulf States and Yemen

The Gulf Region countries clearly show growth and positive change in LIS edu-cation. Higher education is well-supported and there is hospitality to experimen-tation with a variety of extra-government institutions although one might remem-ber earlier efforts to change conservative education practices that led to paralleleducation systems: one religious and classic and one secular and scientific (Cook,1999). It would be a missed opportunity if parallel education tracks evolve againwhereby one system is private, technical, expensive and focused on global issues,and the other system is government-supported, inexpensive and focused on moretraditional and historic values. Although the authors found evidence of someinter-relationships among the schools in the region, Al-Suqri charges that therehas been little collaboration among the LIS departments in the GCC region whichhe sees as a serious weakness for sustainability and long-term survival. He findsevidence of significant shortcomings in the schools in terms of technological

7 See European Commission Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) fora further discussion of these programs – http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/tempus/and http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus_mundus/



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resources, expertise and facilities along with high drop-out rates of students.One barrier to effective collaboration that he identifies is the relatively weak ITinfrastructure; another is the lack of government involvement and support for col-laboration. He suggests that the regional chapter of the Special Libraries Associa-tion could act as a vehicle for the development of collaborative activities andmechanisms in the Gulf region (Al-Suqri, 2010).

Iraq

The LIS programs in Iraq are still suffering the after-effects of over thirty years ofwar and civil unrest. The conflicts continue. In late July 2014, it was reportedthat the Department of Librarianship and Information Studies at the Universityof Mosul had been closed as a result of actions taken by terrorists in the area.Peace and stability must return to Iraq before the LIS programs will be able toprogress and make up for the decades when they have been relatively isolatedfrom the progress in LIS education that has occurred in most of the other pro-grams in the area.

The Levant

As echoed by Younis (2013), LIS programs in the Levant suffer from the fact thatthey are not up-to-date with their course offerings and content, and are lackingin areas related to information, computer, and communication technologies.The programs not only focus significantly on traditional practices (e.g., technicalservices), but they do so with little hands-on practice or training. Furthermore,most departments lack the necessary laboratories, computing equipment, andinformation technology infrastructure that would better prepare the students forthe labor market. While internships are part of the requirements for graduationin many of the LIS programs in the Levant, most institutions that offer LISdegrees lack the library resources (from books to journals and databases) neces-sary to teach effectively. Moreover, many of the students who study LIS do sonot because of their interest in the field but as a result of government policiesthat force students with certain high school GPAs (usually low scores) to enrollin LIS programs if they wish to attend college at all. Most students enroll in andgraduate from these programs still lacking foreign language skills and the neces-sary computing skills to increase their chances of employment. Finally, LIS pro-grams in the Levant suffer from the fact that many of their faculty members aregraduates of other Arab LIS programs, and many do not hold doctoral degrees.



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This is not to mention the internal conflicts and wars in nearly the entire Levantregion that must be taking a significant toll on the progress and development ofthese programs.

Northeast Africa and the Comoros

There are no LIS programs in the Comoros, Djibouti, or Somalia. As for theSudan, the programs there suffer from shortage of qualified staff, poor resourcesand facilities, and poor state of development of the national information infra-structure. As is true for several of the other Arab countries, many of the studentsin the Sudan enroll in LIS programs in the country because it is the only field forwhich they are eligible and many of the graduates do not find jobs after gradua-tion because of the large number of graduates, the small number of librariesthat can absorb them, and the difficulty of the graduates in finding non-libraryjobs because the programs did not prepare them for such jobs (Ahmad & Muham-mad Ali, 2013; ‘Alim, 2013; Amin, 2013; ‘Uthman & Hasan, 2013). With respectto the last point, the LIS graduates are in constant competition for jobs with grad-uates of computer science, business administration, and journalism programs(Ahmad & Muhammad Ali, 2013).

Conclusions

From our look at the individual countries and regions, it is clear that the LISprograms in the Arab states have made many advances in the last fifty yearsbut, like LIS programs across the world, will need to continue to change to facethe challenges of the new information world. Many of the writers we consulted(e.g., Abdel-Hady, Al-Suqri, Bouazza, Elayyan, Gdoura, Muhyiddin, Rehman, Sana-bani, and Younis) provide often-overlapping recommendations for the futuregrowth and prosperity of the Arab LIS programs. We heartily endorse these recom-mendations. These include curriculum revision to include more information sciencecontent; enhanced communication among students and faculty and practitionersthrough stronger professional associations; improved information technology infra-structure connecting libraries and information centers and LIS schools; strongerresearch programs and a more professional orientation for the programs; modernteaching methods; and attention to national information and records managementpolicies; and, we would add, keeping up to date on the fast-changing informationtechnology.



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This conclusion will summarize the strengths and weaknesses we found inthe programs. Some programs are encountering great challenges, but we alsofound great promise in our overview of LIS education in the Arab world. Oneindicator of a healthy education sector is the opening of new programs. Wecount 20 active new programs since the turn of the century. Another is the suc-cessful graduation of large numbers of individuals, which appears to be thecase, despite the fact that there is some question about how, or if, these gradu-ates are being absorbed into the workforce. Many female graduates, who consti-tute the largest number of LIS students, end up staying at home after marriage.In other cases, the available number of graduates for library/information jobsmay be less than the numbers suggest. In addition, there may be a mismatchbetween the knowledge and skills acquired in the educational program andthose demanded in the workplace.

We found substantial growth in the number and vitality of LIS programsin two regions: the Maghreb and the Gulf States. In the latter case, many ofthe countries in the Gulf region have made it a deliberate policy to invest inhigher education and infrastructure. New universities both public and private,research centers, alternative institutions for delivering education, and morepublic libraries are opening.8 It is also clear that the curricular content of manyprograms is transitioning to a broader information-based, more professionalorientation so that graduates are qualified to work not only in libraries but alsoin other information-intensive organizations, like banks, cultural institutions,mass media and large companies, particularly international corporations.

The LIS programs we examined are still mainly at the undergraduate level,which means the LIS content is minimal as it must compete for a place in thecurriculum with general knowledge and other content (often mandated). Under-graduate programs can be valuable if the content concentrates on technologi-cally sophisticated skills,9 although the programs we examined seem to concen-trate on technical skills for libraries of bygone days. Still, in most countries,graduate LIS programs exist and one might cautiously project a trend in thegraduate direction where resources permit and where conflict and politicalunrest do not prevent forward movement. Although in some countries admissionto an LIS graduate degree program requires a bachelor’s degree in that subject,

8 The number of universities active in the Arab region as of 2009 was 398 compared to 174 in1998 (UNESCO, 2009).9 There has been an upsurge in information science programs at the bachelor’s level in theUnited States.



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this does not appear to be a major pattern today. Today, the typical requirementto enter a Master’s in LIS is a BA degree in any field.

As Johnson pointed out that “the last 20 years … have been turbulent timesfor [LIS education] throughout the world” (Johnson, 2013, p. 64). Technologicaland social changes in professional practice have put pressure for change on thecurriculum, the resources requirements and the ways instruction is delivered.Higher education throughout the world has been undergoing a period of rapidexpansion and change driven by neoliberal ideas of education that downplaynationalism and highlight the centrality of the private sector, the primacy of thejob market in dictating what will be taught, and give great emphasis to account-ability, testing and assessment (Miller-Idriss & Hanauer, 2011). Some theoristsposit a growing convergence of educational systems gradually moving to asingle uniform modern system (Anderson-Levitt, 2003), and certainly the LISfield, like most professional fields, has always emphasized a universal andinclusive approach.

From the earliest times, libraries have sought standardization as an effectiveand efficient way of encouraging the free flow of information, whether in books,data sets, or in human expertise. Standardizing measures permeate LIS educa-tion through associations of practitioners and educators, professional publica-tions, and published standards and guidelines for accreditation or certification.In the English-speaking world accrediting bodies like ALA (U.S.A. and Canada)or CILIP (U.K.) have had a powerful effect on upgrading faculty and facilities,revising curricula, and responding to the needs of the job market in order toplace graduates in needed positions.

More global efforts toward standardization include IFLA and UNESCO activ-ities and the Bologna Process for the European Union. A pan-European associa-tion of LIS education and research, called EUCLID, was established as part ofthe Bologna Process in order to encourage comparable degrees, a standardsystem of credits, curricular guidance, student mobility (with attention to lan-guage skills), quality assurance and comparable student assessment schemes(Johnson, 2013). IFLA has promulgated a standard for LIS educational programsnow in a second edition (Smith, Hallam & Ghosh, 2012).

Despite these international efforts a continuing lack of information aboutthe overall characteristics of the Arab region’s higher education institutionscontinues to make it difficult to make comparisons or to see progress. One pro-mising project is attempting to develop a standardized system of classifyinginstitutions of higher education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)(Bhandari & Adnan El-Amine, 2012). The ministers of 57 Islamic states havecalled for the institutions of higher education in their countries to develop reli-able and transparent indicators for measuring their performance in order to



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facilitate innovation and to enhance quality measures for successful interna-tional competition (Sawahel, 2011). Critics of an international system of mea-surement suggest that what is measured should reflect the values and objectivesof the society. Academics in the developing world have long argued that educa-tion should be evaluated by its effect on the entire nation, for example in foster-ing a sense of cohesion based on pride in the country’s history and culture.Before Arab universities can start measuring success, the critics suggest theyneed to decide what it is they want to measure (Guttenplan & Wheeler, 2014).

The lack of clear agreed-on success criteria for higher education has hadan impact on the status of libraries. In a recent two part study of experts in thefield, Sanabani and ‘Alaywi (2010a and 2010b) focused on reasons for the declineof the status of the library profession in the Arab world. Although many of thecauses of this decline echo the problems reported by Johnson and others, onemight argue that the status of the library profession in the Arab world was neverhigh for socio-cultural reasons including the lack of a widely educated populaceand a culture of reading. Add to this the protectiveness by some scholars oftheir knowledge sources, and the result is that active library programs are nothigh priority items. Attention at the national level to clarifying goals, revisingeducational programs, and reforming higher education should stimulate changetoward a more hospitable culture that should enhance the status of the profes-sion through a clearer understanding of the value of modern library services.

Gdoura, in describing the characteristics of the North African library network,points out that many of the libraries and information centers have provided out-standing documentary services despite the lack of coordination and documentarypolicy (Gdoura, 2008). Although statistics are lacking, large libraries have begunto develop database management systems, digital libraries and online catalogs.Gdoura reiterates the problem of status described above and groups the difficul-ties of libraries and information science into economic, technical, managerial,and social issues. For the latter he identifies resistance to reading and “a worryinglevel of illiteracy” (p. 171). Further, he describes the political climate as “not favor-able to freedom of expression and freedom of association and exchange” (p. 174),central concerns of libraries and LIS educational programs.

Despite these problems Gdoura identifies research opportunities for LISfaculty at the Universities of Cairo, Alexandria, and Constantine. He cites sixArab associations that sponsor colloquia, seminars and public proceedings. Hefinds 11 specialized LIS periodicals in the North African region which publishresearch results despite problems of irregular publication and weak editorialpolicy and expertise. Gdoura’s analysis of the published research of these jour-nals demonstrates a strong emphasis on practical and empirical aspects andlittle emphasis on theoretical and methodological issues. He suggests ways to



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stimulate theoretical research in information science through the creation of abibliographic database, open archives, and publication of an Arab encyclopediaof information science. His summary and suggestions provide evidence of ahealthy vitality in the Maghreb region clustered around the growth of informa-tion science education and research often in institutions outside the universitysystem.

As we did our research, we faced difficulties in finding information, butwere fortunate in finding some excellent articles describing LIS programs inparticular areas. One of the authors of this chapter is fluent in Arabic, andlocated and translated a substantial amount of material published in Arabicplus identified URLs for most of the programs on our list. The URLs, on thewhole, however, lead to extremely limited websites, often with only cursoryinformation. A recent World Bank report (2012) states that Arabic digital contentamounts to just 0.162% of the total digital content available online; and thenumber of websites hosted in the Middle East and North Africa region amountsto only 0.198% of the global total (Gelvanovska, Rogy & Rossotto, 2014, p. 22).Although we found websites for most of the LIS programs, the information pro-vided even in Arabic is often severely limited. Perhaps one project for the ArabLIS programs would be to take a leadership role in sharing information abouttheir accomplishments by developing their websites to demonstrate how thesetools can be effective vehicles for communication and promotion. More easilyavailable information would be a step toward harmonizing the various programsto permit easier movement of LIS professionals across countries. It would alsomake collecting the kind of information required by an accreditation or certifica-tion program or other method of quality control easier.

In 2004, Hafiz examined the content of websites of LIS departments in theArab world and compared them to those in Canada and the United States. Hefound at that time that websites of many universities in the Arab countries werenonexistent or under construction, and that those universities which did havewebsites for individual colleges only included a listing but no website for thedepartments within the Colleges. Some LIS departments had websites, but thesewere often limited to contact information with only a few words about theprogram and its missions and goals. In many cases the websites were largelyinactive, and did not include current information (Hafiz, 2004). His conclusionwas that none of the LIS departments’ websites could be considered interactive,informative and up-to-date. He included recommendations and justifications fordeveloping workable websites. Much can happen in a few years in the technol-ogy area but, even twelve years later, we might echo many of Hafiz’ findings.

Involving students in the improvement of websites as an educational projectmight be one way to showcase their skills in web design and development and



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increase their job opportunities. Incorporating these skills into the curriculumcould enable each school to create an information-rich web presence providingdetails about the faculty and their research, the strategic direction of the program,the achievements of and placement information about the graduates, affiliationswith associations and other organizations. An informative website might act asan example to other higher education units. Of course, curricular emphasis inthis area presupposes access to the necessary technical resources and expertise.These are not often found in abundance in Colleges of Arts and Humanities butare often more widely available in science and technology faculties. It appearsthat many schools are aware of this problem and are attempting to redress it byseeking different organizational alignments. We support this nascent trend.

The institutional home where most of the programs are housed is often abarrier to progress. Most LIS programs in the Arab world are departments in aCollege of Arts and/or Humanities. While we do not share the devaluing of thehumanities that seems to be a part of the “education for jobs” [and only jobs]movement, we do wonder if the placement of these programs contributes totheir low status. For example, current curricula for Bachelor of Science in Infor-mation Science (BSIS) degrees often includes mathematics, analytical skills,systems design, database design/implementation, and evidence-based evalua-tion, i.e. coursework that is not often found in arts and humanities programs.Professional programs typically draw from disciplines across the humanities,science and social sciences, and are not wholly at home in any one discipline.Historically library science programs were closer to the humanities, but in thelast forty years they have found greater compatibility in the social sciencesbecause of the increased focus in the LIS field on understanding the user popu-lation using tools and concepts from psychology and sociology combined witha strong empirical/experiential research tradition which also uses methodolo-gies developed in the social sciences. It is difficult to modernize a curriculumand attract research faculty if the program is not in a hospitable environment.

Modern LIS programs train information professionals to go out into thecommunity to analyze citizen needs and to work collaboratively with other com-munity groups to respond to those needs and to strengthen community organi-zations. These programs use the tools of literature and reading, storytelling, col-lective memory and community gatherings and they encourage the developmentof outreach and leadership skills. There is an emphasis on capacity-building,preserving local heritage, rejecting stereotypes, and embracing a multi-culturalapproach. These activities build social capital and strengthen local identity.These activities would also seem compatible with the Arab emphasis on huma-nistic and holistic education.



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Worldwide communities are discussing the issue of how to increase socialcapital and strengthen regional identity, often accomplished though culturalinstitutions like libraries, archives, and museums. In the Arab regional confer-ence on higher education held in Cairo in 2009 a core issue was social respon-sibility in higher education and several papers addressed problems that uni-versities face in assuming this responsibility (UNESCO Regional Bureau forEducation in the Arab States, 2009). Some of these papers discuss disputesarising from the disparity between the culture acquired in the university and tra-ditional social values; others spoke to the weak civic and political orientationsof university students and their lack of organizing skills. Still others concen-trated on how universities can exit their closed environments and become moreinvolved in community affairs. Higher education programs that train social pro-fessions, such as teachers, historians, linguists, philosophers, sociologists, psy-chologists, and librarians are important for strengthening an intellectual andgrowth culture. Rebalancing the flow of resources in a more equitable manner,while still privileging science and technology, is called for in the report.

Based on the evidence we examined in preparing this chapter, it appearsthat one of the greatest needs for the LIS programs in the Arab world is to workmore closely with one another to increase the quality of LIS education acrossthe region. In 1994 Johnson reported on a meeting in Morocco of representativesfrom LIS programs in the Arab speaking world. One of the topics discussed wasthe poor communication among the programs in the area, and one of the out-comes was an agreement to establish an Arab Association of Library and Infor-mation Science Education (Johnson, 1994). As far as we can tell, such an organi-zation was never established, although we recognize the Arab Federation ofLibraries and Information (AFLI) as a potential parent or affiliate organization.Having a regional organization, similar to the European Association for Libraryand Information Education and Research (EUCLID) or the Association for Libraryand Information Science Education (ALISE), would provide many benefits. A pan-Arab LIS association could be a mechanism for sharing information and resourcesrelating to LIS education among the region’s programs, all of which share linguis-tic and cultural similarities. Such an association could be a way to address manyof the weaknesses we saw in the programs. It could strengthen Arab LIS educationby serving as a proponent and advocate for the field, and thus give it a strongerpublic voice in shaping its future. It might provide a way for some of the strongerprograms to help those which have fewer resources by sponsoring faculty andstudent exchanges and joint research projects. In addition, such an organizationwould be a strong candidate to maintain a current, up-to-date directory of Arabworld LIS schools. Ultimately this proposed association might serve as a body to



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promote and coordinate accreditation efforts for the programs in the region.Rehman (2012) investigated the possibility of a regional accreditation agency forthe LIS programs located in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations.Although he reported that all the programs in the Gulf are engaged in some sortof evaluation process, none are presently accredited, although he states that“there is a general consciousness about the need for instituting accreditation pro-grammes to ensure quality in LIS education in this region” (p. 66–67). Worldwide,there is a growing interest in methods of quality assurance in LIS programs and,with the caveat mentioned above about beginning with consensus on desirableattributes, some sort of regional accreditation would be a great step forward inhaving the programs in the Arab world recognized for their achievements andwelcomed as part of the global LIS community.

In conclusion, we have tried to provide a balanced overview of LIS educa-tion in the Arab states in the context of developments in higher education in theregion. Not surprisingly, we found it impossible to provide the same level ofinformation about each country because the amount of published materialabout the programs is uneven. For example, a great deal of information is avail-able about new developments in LIS education in the Gulf States and in some ofthe countries of the Maghreb, but very little could be found about LIS educationin several other Arab countries.

We hope this chapter contributes forward progress toward what needs to bedone to provide current and accurate information about LIS education in Arabworld. We encourage others to build upon what we have done (as we built onothers). We plan to put the list of LIS programs on the web and make it freelyavailable so that it can be updated as programs change.

Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank the people who read and pro-vided information on the current state of LIS education in the Arab states. Anymistakes or omissions in the chapter are solely the fault of the authors.

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Received: 29th June 2014Final version received: 29th September 2014Accepted: 28th October 2014



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